


A Game of Hearts

by Mutant_Toad



Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Timelines, Drastic Personality Changes, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Human Flaying, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Sex, Non-Canon Relationship, POV Alternating, Puppy Love, Romantic Fluff, Sexual Violence, Torture, Underage Drinking, Violence, Young Love
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-06
Updated: 2019-08-05
Packaged: 2020-04-11 14:33:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 20
Words: 41,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19111648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mutant_Toad/pseuds/Mutant_Toad
Summary: A Game of Hearts can involve just as much pain, suffering, death, and change in life as a Game of Thrones can. Playing can be hard and filled with tears. There are rarely winners in a Game of Hearts.**I'm terrible at summaries**





	1. Bran

**Author's Note:**

> Timelines have been extended to allow for Bran still to be injured at ten, but for more intimate situations to happen at more appropriate ages to avoid some squick factors. Bran and Linly are both just turning thirteen when Bran leaves Winterfell and Theon has control. I'll make references to ages and such to help keep some kind of order in the timeline. No descriptive sexual situations will happen to characters under the age of sixteen. It will be implied that things may have happened, but nothing graphically written out. This is for my own personal comfort. However, there will be graphic violence and gore involving these underage characters.
> 
> Tags/Characters will be expanded as I write more. It's almost 2am right now while I'm posting this and I can't think of anymore right now that should be expected for future chapters. Sorry.

Father would be upset if he lost his direwolf pup. He had been extremely clear that they were not to have help in raising the pups when Robb and he had begged to keep them. It seemed like an easy task at first. Just raise a puppy. The kennelmaster did it all the time. It really didn’t seem that hard to feed a pup, pet it, and teach it to sit. In truth, those parts really hadn’t been all that difficult. Summer and his siblings were all very intelligent. They took to their feeding schedules and basic training quickly. No, the part that was difficult was handling the wolf spirit in them.

That uncontrollable energy that told them to run. Not because they were in danger or feared the Stark family, but because they needed to run. They had to move through the trees and see their territory. Summer kept to him much of the time, but he would get a wild hair about him and run. It was slowly becoming a game. Summer would run off and it was up to Bran to find him. When he did manage to locate the pup, it would excitedly circle him and jump up against him. It was a game, but it was an exhausting one, even for the excitable climber that he was.

Each of the wolves seemed to have their own personality. His sister’s didn’t play the hide and seek game, Robb’s was very obedient and always sat at his feet, then there was the silent Ghost. Jon’s was by far the most striking of the pups. Summer was a ball of energy, which mother said reflected him the best. She said that Summer acted that way because he would act that way.

Bran had woke and dressed for the day with Summer laying on his bed, but the minute he opened the door, the pup bounded off the bed and took off. Father would view it was disobedient. He needed to teach the wolf pup to only play this game when he said it was time to play it. 

He checked all the usual places Summer went first. The cub liked going to sniff around the kennel, though the kennelmaster would usually chase him off. The next place was his sister Arya’s room, because he would try to get Nymeria to play with him. Out of the other cubs, Nymeria was the one closest to have the same energy level as Summer. The last was the kitchen. Even though the servants weren’t supposed to help them with the cubs, they did sometimes. Mostly with feeding them. Summer could usually get the maids to give him a treat or two if he went to the kitchen.

When those places didn’t yield his pup, Bran began walking around the whole of Winterfell looking for the wolf. If he didn’t find it soon, he was going to have to go endure Maester Luwin by himself. Mother insisted that even though he was going to be a bannerman one day and hopefully join the King’s Guard some day, he needed a full and proper education. It wasn’t that he didn’t enjoy learning things, but it was all just so dull sometimes. Mother was right. Summer got his personality from him. He got the same wild hair that told him to just run whenever the Maester kept him sitting for too long.

Kicking a half frozen clump of mud, he resigned that he would have to keep looking later. He couldn’t hold off Maester Luwin anymore or the old man would go tell his mother. He climbed the steps to the Maester’s tower room and entered, “I’m sorry I’m late, Maester Luwin,” he said softly as he closed the door.

“Looking for your pup again, Master Bran?” the old man was very kindly. There were times when he was very much like a father and Bran did love him dearly. He was smart too. The smartest person Bran knew. He really did enjoy some of the reading he did in his lessons. Especially the stories of the wars and the Others beyond the wall. Those sessions were far and few between though. 

Bran turned fast as he heard a yelping bark from behind him. Summer was sitting under the table at the Maester’s feet. With him was a little girl. She had a cloth with dried meat in her lap and was holding a piece out to the wolf, but her eyes had turned to him. She looked scared. 

She couldn’t have been more than his own age. She was small enough to fit comfortably under the table, same as he could. She looked much thinner than he was though. Someone not used to eating often. Her feet were bare and dirty, but so were her hands and face. It was hard to tell the color of her hair, because it was dirty too, but it looked lighter. It was some kind of blond, which was uncommon up here in the north. She had green eyes that seemed too big for her head. Summer yelped at him again before returning to eating the dried meat the girl had.

Girls weren’t supposed to have lessons with Maester Luwin. They were supposed to go with Old Nan. Not that this girl looked like someone who Old Nan would be teaching. Though sitting under the table with a direwolf pup, Bran didn’t think she was getting any kind of teaching. 

“I found him…” he said lightly as he started towards the table. The girl looked away and pushed the cloth filled with dried meat off her lap and onto the floor for Summer to finish eating. As Bran got closer, she scooted out from under the table and slowly made her way to the window to sit on the ledge. 

“Actually, Linly found him. Or rather, he found Linly’s dried meat.”

“Who is she?”

The girl finally spoke, making him jump a little, “She can talk. You can ask ‘she’ questions too if they are about her.”

Maester smirked and shook his head a little, “Linly is one of the girls from outside of Winterfell. Linly, this is Master Bran. One of Lord Stark’s sons. Behave yourself.”

He had heard his mother talk about the girls outside of Winterfell. The ones who lived in the small village. Whores, mother called them. Robb and Theon liked going down there and said when he was older they would take him down too. Bran didn’t know exactly what that meant yet. Mother said she felt sorry for the children of the whores. They came up here sometimes. They boys would work in the yards and the kennel. The girls would help in the kitchen and work with the maids. What was this girl doing with Maester Luwin?

“Now come sit, Master Bran, you’re late and we have much to cover.”

He kept his eyes on Linly as he walked around and sat in his chair. Summer nipped at his fingers from under the table before going back to her dried meat. He finally looked at the table and saw the familiar books laid out. It was the family books. He hated the family books. He was supposed to memorize the family names, banners, and motos. It was the most boring lesson. One that would never be over, because the families were always expanding. Someone was always having a child that he had to remember the name of. He couldn’t wait until he was old enough to run away from these lessons like Robb, Jon, and Theon had done.

Despite hating the family lessons, he tried to pay attention. It was hard though. He kept looking up at Linly. She just sat still as a statue in the window, looking out over Winterfell. He wasn’t used to seeing people his own age sit so still. The only thing moving was her eyes. She looked all around outside the window. He couldn’t help but wonder what she was looking at.

“Master Bran, are you paying attention?”

He snapped back to attention and broke his gaze on Linly, “The badger, Maester Luwin.”

“Excuse me?”

He could have sworn he was asked what the Mormont family banner was. Though the answer didn’t sound correct either, “Bear. I’m sorry. The bear.”

“What is this about badgers and bears? I asked you what the house words of the Tyrell was.”

“Growing strong, Maester Luwin,” he said quickly to cover up his embarrassment. 

“Very good. Now pay attention,” but he couldn’t. He kept looking at Linly. Bran realized that as still as she was, she wanted out of here too. Which meant she wasn’t allowed to leave. Her eyes looked everywhere out the window, because that’s where she wanted to be.

Mother would punish him if he ran out of his lessons with Maester Luwin. Bran had to wonder who would punish her if she ran.


	2. Linly

“Girl, if you’re going to be helping clean, then you best be clean yourself. Lady Catelyn won’t tolerate you if you’re running around leaving dirt trails everywhere. She’ll barely tolerate you even when you’re cleaned up. Whore child,” the Old Nan tugged her hair sharply as she squirmed in the tub of water. The water felt warm, but she didn’t want to be in it. She wanted to be out running around in the trees with Bran, “Now hold still otherwise I’ll just cut all your hair off it you won’t let me clean it. Make you into a little boy. Is that what you want?”

“I hate you,” she growled.

“I’m sure you do. You’re lucky Lady Catelyn found you sleeping in the stables and it wasn’t someone else. They would have pulled you out by your hair and tossed you in the mud outside the gate...or worse. She should have dragged you back down to that whore house and made your mother claim you. Not likely that she would have. After all, you’ve been here for three months and she’s not come to find you yet. So you’re going to start behaving like a proper maid and that means you get a good washing before you start handling the sheets.”

“I don’t want to clean sheets,” she fussed as the old woman tugged her backwards. Her arms and legs flailed in the water as Old Nan shoved her down under the water. Breaking back up above the surface, she gasped for breath, “Cunt!”

“Foul language will not be tolerated,” the woman grabbed her slippery shoulder and shoved her back under.

“Bitch!” she shouted as she came back up again.

The hand came across her face hard. It would have hurt more if it had been the first time she had ever felt a slap. It wasn’t though. She had been slapped many time before running away from her mother and the other whores, “You watch your tongue or I will personally drag you out those gates. Do you want to go back to where you came from? Do you?”

Linly narrowed her eyes sharply at the crone. She wanted to lash out again. Call her all sorts of names. Then she thought about Bran. She liked the young Lord Stark. He was kind to her. He and Maester Luwin were the only nice ones. Old Nan was a mean, old bitch. Linly knew how to tell when people were lying to her though. Old Nan wasn’t lying when she said she’d drag her out the gates. If she was tossed out, she wouldn’t get to keep learning how to read with Maester Luwin and she didn’t get to run through the forest with Bran.

It was getting more and more difficult to run off with Bran though. Lady Catelyn had caught them playing together behind the armory several days ago. The Lady of Winterfell had not been pleased. Linly heard her say as they were walking away that he wasn’t to play with her anymore. That there were plenty of boys and girls his age to play with. That Linly not be one of them. Later that day, Lady Catelyn told her that she was to start being of use around here or else she would have to find a new home. Said she had to learn from Old Nan how to be a proper maid.

Linly refused to go back outside to the village. That wasn’t an option. Her mother had no love for her, she didn’t know who her father was, and the madame had found out that she had already started to bleed. Only at the age of ten. The madame said it was not common, but not unheard of. Said that the body knows when it’s ready to start becoming a woman. They both agreed that it was time for Linly to start earning her keep there too and that her mother would get a share of her earnings. 

If she went back there, she knew what would happen. That’s why she had run away in the first place. She’d sooner throw herself from the tallest tower in Winterfell than go back there.

So she stopped squirming. She sat in the water quietly and leaned back so Old Nan could wash her hair, “You’re no better than a Wildling. We might as well throw you over the wall if you want to be a dirty little brat.”

The woman pulled and tugged her hair hard. Much harder than she felt was needed. Working the oil and soap through it and tugging out the dirt, “What will I have to do?”

“In the morning, you’ll strip the young ladies of the house’s beds. You’ll make sure they have fresh sheets everyday. Then you’ll sweep the halls after breakfast. Then you’ll help in the kitchen to get the other meals for the day prepared for everyone. Then you’ll help launder the clothing…”

It seemed like so much, “When can I play? When I can study with Maester Luwin?”

“You’ll be doing neither of those. I can’t believe that old man thought he would try to teach you how to read. What do you need to learn how to read for? As for playing, you’re lucky the Lady of the House didn’t throw you out when she caught you with Master Brandon. A girl like you trying to be friends with a Stark,” the old lady shook her head, “You stay away from that boy. The Lord and Lady Stark are very tolerant people. More so than they should be sometimes. They have a soft spot for children like you. Don’t abuse their tolerance, Girl. It’ll only last so long.”

Linly went silent for the rest of the bath. When was the last time she had been bathed? She couldn’t remember ever having been bathed properly in her life. Just a rinse in the creek. That’s all she was allowed. She would get beaten bloody if she tried to use one of the tubs at the house. Madame wouldn’t hear of it. She knew she should be grateful for the bath now. Should be grateful that she was being allowed to stay in Winterfell and being given proper duties. There might not be wages, but food and a roof were good wages too. Linly had a hard time feeling grateful for anything though.

Old Nan dried her off and dressed her. It was much nicer than what she had been wearing before. It felt thicker and warmer. The dress was a muted green color, pulled over a under dress so the fabric didn’t itch her skin. The breeches under it weren’t leather, but any covering against the chill wind was better than nothing. And shoes. Linly had resisted them at first, but Old Nan eventually forced them on over her feet. She wouldn’t admit that it was nice not to feel the old on her feet. She wouldn’t give the old crone that satisfaction, “There. Now you look a proper maid. I’ll get you an apron and hair covering later on. Last thing we need is the boys looking at you.”

She gave the old woman a sharp glare again, “Don’t think you can fool me, Girl. I’ve been around much longer than any other woman in Winterfell. I’ve seen more girls become women than you’ll ever meet. I know the signs. We need to keep those boys from noticing those budding breasts of yours. I’ll get you a thick apron. How many cycles have you had?”

She didn’t want to answer, but there was no point in lying, “Two.”

Old Nan nodded, “Keep it to yourself. Lord and Lady Stark don’t tolerate certain things, but that does not mean they can prevent it from happening. Do you know how to use a knife? To defend yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Good. That’ll make things easier. Keep it in your apron. Aim for the testicales if you need to. It’s the easiest place to get them to stop. A quick jab will ward them off for a time,” it was a far cry from what they had told her at the brothel. They said to go limp and it would be over soon enough. 

“...won’t I get in trouble for hurting one of Lord Stark’s men?”

“They won’t tell anyone. What will they say if they do? A little girl attacked them and they couldn’t fight her off? They attacked a little girl and she beat them? Either way, it looks bad on them. They’ll go lick their wounds and find someone else,” maybe there was something about Old Nan to like, “Go on. Out of here. You’ll start your duties in the morning. Best make sure you know where everything is. The Head Maid won’t tolerate ignorance, real or feigned,” the old lady swatted her backside a bit to get her to move.

Slowly, Linly exited the room and looked up and down the stone hallway. It was quiet. Old Nan was what any servant should hope to become. So well loved by the Lord and Lady of the house that they are allowed spend their elderly years well taken care of without anything expected of them. Linly would never be that. The best she could hope for was what most young girls could hope for. Marriage and a baby. That sounded as dull as being an Old Nan. Linly didn’t want that either.

One day, her life would mean something and if that meant skipping being a whore to become a maid as her first stepping stone, she’d take it.


	3. Old Nan

Youth was such a wonderful thing to watch. Many thought she might be jaded about such things by this point in her life. Disliking the younger folk for their ways because it was different from how she was raised, but she didn’t. Nan liked watching the change in pace and life. It was a good thing. Nothing good ever grew from unturned soil with stagnant water. There needed to be movement and progress if things were ever expected to get better in any kind of way. She enjoyed watching it.

As much as she didn’t approve of what the whores did, she understood it. If a woman could convince a dull man to pay for it, why shouldn’t she profit off of it? She knew what the girls were doing when they would bat their eyes at one of the men in the yard. They could feign ignorance all they wanted, but they knew. It was unspoken, but women were allowed to express themselves this way these days. Not like when she was young. Being flirtatious in her youth was no an option. 

She also knew that deep down there was no difference between a commoner and a noble. They all bleed the same and they all reproduced the same. One just happened to have a family member get lucky somewhere in their past. She understood why the nobles wanted to keep their sons and daughters away from the common folk. It divided their money and no one wanted that. Still, she knew sometimes love couldn’t be helped. 

The new girl, Linly, was borderline savage. She kept losing her shoes and running around barefoot. Her hair was always a tangled mess of buttered toast colored blond. The Stark girls, mostly Sansa, complained of her sheets being dirty several times because Linly hadn’t washed them properly. One man, from the smithery, she had seen limping and nursing a wound on his thigh and she knew he had made a mistake with the savage girl. Worse yet was her interactions with Brandon.

The boy was just as bad an influence on her as she was to him. He’d convince her to run off into the forest with him at all hours. No one ever tried to stop them, because they weren’t willing to tell the young lord that. They would rather deal with one less pair of hands to help. It was easier that way. 

Nan could see a good distance into the forest from her room. She could see them climbing trees and playing with the direwolf whelp. She saw Brandon sitting with her with a book stolen from the Maester, teaching her to read. She watched as she taught Brandon how to climb trees without his shoes. To use his toes like a savage to help him climb. She watched as time after time, Lady Catelyn dragged her son off. It didn’t stop them though. Nan was sure that it didn’t take much to convince Linly to run off. Deep down, she was sure that Lady Catelyn didn’t mind the situation so long as it didn’t blossom into something more.

Looking down from her room window, she saw what she thought was love starting to bloom. Problematic love to those who didn’t want their sons or daughters involved with people of lesser standing.

The two of them were sitting on the ground just inside the tree line. That savage girl had stolen dried corn and popped it in a fireplace somewhere and the two of them were sitting together eating it and looking at one of the books she assumed the young master stole from the Maester. They were only ten years old. Too young to understand what was happening, but Nan knew. There were times when a young boy and girl got close that others would say what a lovely pair they would make, but Nan knew better. She would tell them that it wasn’t blossoming love. That it was just a connection in personality. She had seen enough young love to know when it was real or not.

This was real. 

She knew it as she watched the girl toss popcorn at him and he tackled her to the ground laughing. It was only a matter of time when he would do that and neither of them would want to get up. They were still too young though. Even if she had already begun to bleed, it was still too soon. They would have another handful of years before that began. That’s when it would start to become a true problem. For now, it was still puppy love.

Nan watched as he climbed up from the ground and helped her to her feet. The young master reached down to the ground and plucked one of the winter pansies and handed it to her. Lady Catelyn was in for a future of grandchildren with sandy blond hair and green eyes who ran the halls like savages if this kept up.

It was up to the old crones like herself to keep it from happening. The most Lady Catelyn protested it, the more likely it was to happen. Linly needed to be worked harder. That’s all there was to it. Make it to where she didn’t have the energy to go out to run in the trees.

Linly wasn’t a terrible girl. When she did work, she did work hard. She could lift more than the other girls and she didn’t care to do the dirty work. Sometimes she relaxed on her duties, but only when it came to the Stark girls. A bit of jealousy, possibly. That would pass with time. Eventually, she would understand her place and she would stop running off with the boy. He would find eyes for another girl. One more suitable. Meanwhile, Linly would do the same.

She remembered her own young love. A sweet boy named Dale. He had been everything that he was supposed to be. Love had worked in her favor. They married young and lived lonely lives. Working for the Starks provided a good home for them. Her husband had served the family as master builder until his passing and she had worked hard to become Lady Catelyn’s primary handmaid. Not everyone was so lucky to have their young love be their only love. 

Brandon may bleed the same as Linly, but things had not progressed far enough for that yet. Their hearts would be broken one day. Better to try to stop it before it got too painful for them.


	4. Bran

Breathing heavy and running hard, he made his way through the trees. Sucking in the crisp air of the summer winter. It burned his lungs, but he liked the way it felt. Bran had to focus on several things at once. Control his breathing, watch for low branches, watch for high roots, and make sure not to get caught. It was a lot of things, but he did them well. It was why he never fell. He could climb anything and never fall. He could run through the forest outside Winterfell and never lose his footing. It would take more than some trees to knock him down.

Summer howled and he turned his head to see his direwolf running through the trees not too far away. The pups were all growing at an alarming rate. He assumed it was because they were not normal wolves. If a direwolf had to grow to become twice or more the size of the normal wolf, then it would have to grow at twice or more the normal rate. It only made sense that Summer could stand on his hind paws and be eye to eye with him.

As he looked back ahead, he had to stop suddenly as she dropped out of the tree. He couldn’t stop fast enough though. He barrelled into Linly hard. Despite the pain of crashing to the ground in a tangled mess of limbs, they both laughed loudly.

“I caught you!” she teased as they pulled apart and climbed to their feet. Summer was on them both fast. The wolf took her down first, knocking her back into the dirt, before going to his master and taking Bran down next. 

“Summer got us both,” he said as the direwolf lapped at his face for a moment before he was able to get to his feet again.

It had been seven months since he met Linly in Maester Luwin’s room. He liked the wild girl. She was exciting. She didn’t care that he wasn’t a good shot with a bow or that he sometimes cried. All she cared about was having fun and they had a lot of fun together. Chasing, reading, and climbing. He liked telling her about Winterfell and teaching her to read. He found out that Maester Luwin thought she was intelligent and that was why he had tried to teach her. Old Nan and his mother put a stop to that, so he was doing it. Linly picked up on things fast. She’d be reading completely on her own soon enough, he was sure of it.

“Lets go climb something,” she said excitedly, “Before Old Nan finds me and makes me go wash your sisters sheets again.”

“We could go to the broken tower. I’ve climbed it before,” mother was always telling him to stay away from it. That it was dangerous. She didn’t like him climbing things at all. Always worried he would fall and get hurt. Bran never fell from climbing though. 

Right now, he should have been back in the main hall. Mother and Father told him he had to be kind to the King’s children. He didn’t like them though. All they wanted to do was talk about how nice King’s Landing was compared to here. He had no interest in listening to that when he could be out here climbing and running. Linly didn’t even have to be here. Just so long as he wasn’t there.

Summer ran around between them as they started for the broken tower, “Do you think the Prince is handsome?”

He looked over to see the strange look she was giving him, “That pansy little prick? I bet he’s never even had dirt under his nails.”

That made him smile a little, “Probably not. The queen is pretty though.”

“She is not.”

“Yes she is. She’s one of the most beautiful women in all the realms.”

Linly shoved him a little. He remembered the first time he saw her after Old Nan finally got her bathed. He hadn’t recognized her. With all the dirt gone, he could see her snow white skin. A lot of people up north had that skin tone. Her hair looked like buttered toast, “I think she’s hideous.”

“Be careful saying that. I heard she locks up people who say things like that about her.”

“She can try, but I can outrun her hag face no matter how many guards she sends,” he liked the way she talked. She swore a lot sometimes. Mother would have had his tongue if she caught him saying some of the things Linly did, “I’ll shove a broomstick up her cunt if she tries to grab me.”

It was his turn to shove her a little as they got nearer the tower, “I still think she’s pretty.”

“I bet you do. You’re going to marry a crotchety old hag like her some day.”

“No I won’t!” he defended himself, “I’m going to join to be Captain of the Kingsguard and I’m going to have a beautiful, young wife and a son to carry on the Stark name,” though he knew the Kingsguard took no wives or had children. He just wanted to keep talking to her.

“She’ll be ugly and old and mean,” she stuck her tongue out at him and took off running.

Bran ran after her, “What if I said you’d be my wife?!”

“I can’t be your wife! You want a pretty wife and I’m ugly! And I’ll never have children! I’m never getting married!”

“You have to get married!” he managed to catch up to her and grabbed her arm to get her to stop, “Who will protect you if you don’t?”

Linly looked at him with her big, green eyes. She paused before she answered, “Why can’t I protect myself?”

It was hard to answer her. People always gave conflicting answers to stuff like that. Mother told his sisters that they needed to be strong. That they needed to have their own thoughts and feelings. Yet she also told them to let the men lead and save their words for private company, “I don’t...I don’t know.”

They both stood there quietly, looking into each others eyes, until he felt his cheeks warming. Her cheeks flushed too and they broke their gazes finally, “You should climb first. It was your idea and if it’s going to crumble to pieces, it should do it around you, brat,” she teased to break the awkwardness.

The broken tower loomed before them. Father always said he was going to have it fixed some day, but it never got done. There was always something more important. Mother always told him to stay away from it, but she also told him to stay away from Linly. If he was going to break one rule, he might as well break them both.

“I’ll climb first and you follow once I’m up.”

“Got it. I’m going to go get some hackberries. We can eat them up there, if we don’t fall to our deaths,” she always carried food in her apron pocket. Usually dried meats for Summer, but other times there was popcorn, bread, and berries.

Bran watched her walk off back into the trees before turning his attention back to the tower. There were plenty of wooden stakes jutting out of it and a lot of footholes. Bran had surveyed it several times. He saw no reason why he couldn’t climb it. He was sure it was just the inside that was actually dangerous. The outside was as sturdy as any of the other walls that were built at the same time.

Mother was going to be angry if someone saw him, but he didn’t care. He walked up to the wall and stuck his foot in the first opening.


	5. Maester Luwin

It was a terrible tragedy. He’d known all of the Stark children since they were born. Before they were born, really. While they were still bumps in their mother’s belly. To see Bran lying in his bed this way, it was heartbreaking for the old man. It was wrong to say that Bran was different from his siblings. In truth, all of them were vastly different from each other. What it really was, was that Bran had been his favorite of the Stark children. The boy had a curiosity in him that couldn’t be satisfied. While it was hard to get him to sit through all his lessons, the boy did love much of them. 

It was Linly who came running through the gates that afternoon. Tears pouring down her little face, feet covered in dirt and blood from not watching where she had been running, out of breath, and nearly throwing up when she tried to talk. Finally she got the words out. Bran had fallen.

Lord and Lady Stark had the girl held for questioning as Bran was brought in. The boy was limp and his body twisted awfully. One man could have carried him alone, but several were supporting the boy’s broken form out of fear of damaging it more. There were whispers that Linly had done it. That she had pushed the young Stark from the top of the tower. 

He stood up for the poor girl. She was in a panic and swearing to the gods that she would never hurt Bran. Surprisingly, the Old Nan spoke up for the girl as well. Saying that she truly believed Linly would never hurt the boy. The girl said she heard Bran call out and ran back to the tower to find him already on the ground. He and Old Nan believed her. After much talking, the girl was released. They might not have believed her innocence like the two elderly did, but they had no proof. Things were very grim and sullen after that. Linly did her duties without question after that. She didn’t try to sneak into his work room to read his books anymore. 

Lady Catelyn rarely left the boy’s side as he lay unconscious in his bed. Nothing could pry her away from him. As for himself, he tended to the boy as best he could. His spine had been broken. It had been painful to see the tears on the mother’s face as he had to maneuver the boy’s body into place to allow the bones to start setting. He was as honest as he could be with the Lord and Lady. He told them that there was a chance Bran might never wake and that if he did wake, he would never walk again. He’d seen these sorts of injuries before. The outcome would not be good either way and they needed to be prepared for it. If Bran ever woke, he would be a cripple.

Leaving the room, he took a deep breath as he closed the door behind him. Lady Catelyn was still in there. It was hard to tell if she would ever leave even if the boy woke.

It had been a few weeks since Bran’s fall and his whole life since then was practically dedicated to making sure the boy healed. He remembered the sound of the bones in his body crackling as they got him into the bed. After everything he had seen in his life, he was surprised when things still got to him.

“Maester Luwin,” he turned at the sound of the soft voice. Linly was standing around the corner at the end of the hallway.

“Girl, what are you doing hiding down there?”

“Lady Catelyn said if I ever come down this hallway, she’ll have me whipped,” of course she did. Catelyn was a tolerant woman, but this was her child. She was a mama bear. Ready to defend her baby at all costs. It didn’t matter what anyone said. Linly was the only one that had been there that day and Catelyn needed someone to blame. Not wanting to put the girl in an uncomfortable situation, he walked down to her instead of making her come to him, “How is he?”

“Still asleep.”

She wrung her apron in her fingers tightly. He could see the tears starting to creep into her eyes, “It’s all my fault. I should have been there when he fell.”

“And what would you have done, Sweet Girl? Let him fall on you? Then we would have two broken children and possibly dead ones. He’ll wake. Don’t worry,” it was easy to be blunt with the parents, but he didn’t want Linly to cry. 

He’d found the girl hiding in the stables one evening. She’d told him that if he turned her out, she’d have to become a whore like her mother. Luwin was a kind man. He didn’t know if what she had said was true, but he knew what fear looked like. She was scared and he couldn’t send her away. At first, he had tried to hide her in one of the unused rooms. He realized quickly that she was rather smart for her age. Eventually though, they had guests and the rooms needed to be used. Lady Catelyn had found her in the stables much like he had. He was pleased when he heard she was being allowed to stay.

“He’s such a good climber, Maester Luwin. He shouldn’t have fallen.”

“But he did. It was a matter of time before he did and sadly, it had to end this way. Is everyone treating you well?” it wasn’t just Bran he was worried for. Just because she had been released didn’t mean people believed it. People could be cruel, even to a ten year old girl.

“No different than usual,” that was good to hear, though he did know they weren’t all that kind to her to start with, “Maybe if you spoke with Lady Catelyn, she’d let me see him?” she sounded desperate.

“I’m sorry, Linly, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. The accident is still too new and fresh. She’s not ready for that yet.”

“I didn’t do it. I swear. I swear, Maester Luwin,” even now, she was still proclaiming her innocence, which meant she heard people’s whispers. Linly was a smart girl and, unfortunately, smart people heard things more than other people did.

He pat her shoulder lightly as he walked her down towards the kitchen, “I know you didn’t. It’s just going to take time for people to understand that it was an accident. They want someone to blame, because random accidents are even more painful to handle,” if she had done it, why would she have returned to get help? That was an argument he had used. She was smart, but she wasn’t malicious. 

She sobbed softly the rest of the way down for her kitchen duties. He watched her wipe her eyes with her apron, “Linly, I know this is difficult for you. It is for all of us. Some more than others. It’s a terrible thing that has happened, but we will endure and survive. So will Bran. You are a good person and I’m sure when he wakes, one of the first people he will ask to see is you.”

“You think so?”

“I do. He cares for you. You’re his friend,” he had seen them together. They were sweet. Running together, climbing together, eating together, and just talking. They were quite the pair. Lord Stark had expressed minor concern over it. Saying his son needed to spend more time with his brothers. He had assured the Lord of Winterfell that it was normal for adventurous spirits like Bran’s to seek other adventurous spirits. That there was nothing to worry about.

Seeing her concern for Bran so openly, he realized that he might have been wrong. This poor little girl was in love. A feeling that couldn’t possibly have a future. Especially now, “Thank you, Maester Luwin.”


	6. Catelyn

Bran wasn’t her youngest, but he was still one of her children and she tended to view all of her children as her babies. It didn’t matter how old they got. They would always be her babies. Right now, her baby was lying unconscious on a bed and she had no one to blame for it and no way of knowing if he would ever wake up. 

The bruising had faded, but he was still in his deep sleep. Maester Luwin was convinced that if he did ever wake up, he wouldn’t walk again. Catelyn wasn’t ready to accept that. She couldn’t stand the thought of one of her children being crippled that way. What sort of life could he possibly have that way? It was one thing to lose an arm or one leg, but to lose complete use of half his body would stop his life entirely. He’d never accomplish anything that way. He’d barely be able to leave his room.

It had been long days and nights in Bran’s room. She watched over him like a hawk. Refusing to leave her son’s side. Slowly, she felt herself descending into madness. It wasn’t a true madness, because she knew it was happening. It was a deep, angry madness. She found reason to snap at any who came to her son’s room. When the royal party began their departure, the Queen came to visit and she found herself wanting to slap the woman. When the bastard came to say his goodbyes, she yelled at him to leave. The last was her husband, who was going to King’s Landing and abandoning their son in his time of need. She had tried to forgive him for bastarding a child, but this she couldn’t find it in her to even try to forgive.

She was fast asleep in the chair across from his bed when the sound of the door closing woke her. It took several minutes for her eyes to adjust, but she saw the small form cross the room quickly and kneel down beside the bed. At first, she thought it her daughter Arya. The Lady of Winterfell quickly realized that was not who it was. 

It was that whore girl. The one who claims to have found Bran after his fall. The one she was convinced had pushed her son out of the tower. Perhaps it truly had been an accident. That they had been playing in the tower and she pushed him by mistake and he fell out. It didn’t matter if the girl had meant to do it or not, Catelyn was convinced she had done it. Until proof came of another option, this was what she believed. Because she had to believe something.

Catelyn was convinced it was a whore who had bastarded her husband’s child. It was difficult for her to feel sorry for those children. She tried though. That’s why she let that girl stay here. Old Nan said that if the girl went back, she would be thrown to the wolves. Raped and beaten to death, all because her body was mature. Catelyn had matured and had her first bleed at eleven. She understood how hard that made it. She was regretting the decision to feel sorry for this girl.

“What’re you doing in here?!” she snapped as she climbed to her feet.

The girl jumped, “I...I...I’m sorry, Lady Stark. I’m so sorry. I just...I just wanted to see him.”

“I told you that I’d have you whipped,” she threatened. It was usually beyond her to beat children, but she wasn’t herself right now. The girl was shaking like a leaf and wringing her hands nervously. Catelyn watched her and expected her to run, but she didn’t. She just kept looking fast over at Bran before looking back at her feet. 

Old Nan liked the girl. Worked her hard and said she was a fast learner. Maester Luwin said the same thing. They had both defended her when Catelyn accused her of pushing her sweet Bran off that tower. The girl was different now. She didn’t look as wild as she had the first time she saw her. Her hair was clean, her skin was clean, and her clothes were clean. She was even wearing her shoes. She was biting her lips and wringing her hands hard around her apron. 

As much as she wanted to keep blaming her for Bran’s fall, Catelyn knew she couldn’t. This girl had run away from what would have been a terrible life and was willing to work to keep from going back to it. She wasn’t the best maid. Mostly because she did run off with her son much of the time, but when she did work, she put some of the other girls to shame. She knew that Bran convinced her to run off. It wasn’t just her manipulating her son. 

This girl didn’t hurt her child. Whatever had happened to her sweet child, this maid wasn’t involved in it, “Don’t just stand there. Get the stool and sit.”

The girl scurried fast to grab the stool from beside the fire. She ran back over next to the bed and set it down. Catelyn watched as she started to sit, but then got back up quickly and moved the stool to the end of the bed. She had thought to sit by Bran’s head, but thought better of it at the last second. She was a smart girl, “You like my son,” it was a statement, not a question.

“Everyone likes Br...Master Bran, Lady Stark.”

“Most do. It’s wrong to say that everyone likes someone. There is always going to be someone who doesn’t like someone...but he is a sweet boy. Very trusting, very kind, and very energetic. Did you know he was to go to King’s Landing with his father and sister?” the girl shook her head, “I was sad when my husband said he wanted to take Bran,” she took a deep breath as she felt tears creeping into her eyes again. She refused to cry in front of the maid, “This wasn’t how I wanted him to stay…”

The girl was silent for a moment before looking back at her son again, “It’s my fault he fell,” her words made Catelyn look up. She felt her anger rising again. Even if the maid hadn’t pushed him, perhaps it was an accident that caused her to make him fall out the window. It would allow her to blame the girl. To blame someone, “I said he should climb up first because it was his idea and if it was going to collapse, it would do so around him. Then I said I was going to get some hackberries that we could eat up there, unless we fell to out deaths. I...I cursed him...I made the gods angry and they hurt him because of it…” her voice was starting to stutter and she buried her face in her hands.

The anger slowly diminished within her. Catelyn had prayed for Bran to stay and this girl had made a childish claim. It hadn’t ended the way either of them wanted or expected. It wasn’t anymore her fault than it was this girl’s, “You didn’t cause this anymore than I did, Girl. You...You wouldn’t have hurt my son. I know that. I just needed someone to blame to justify it happening.”

“I’d never hurt Bran, not really, Lady Stark. I swear. He’s my only friend,” she had dropped the formal title for her son. Catelyn couldn’t find it in herself to care at the moment. The girl had stopped looking at Catelyn altogether and was simply staring up at her son, “He looks so small…”

She was right. Bran was small, but more so than usual. His body was broken and in his deep sleep he couldn’t eat. She was feeding him milk and honey with some herbs, but it was only sustaining his life, it wasn’t adding to his body. He felt as fragile as a baby bird whenever she touched him. It was starting to take its toll on his body. It felt like the slightest breeze would push him off the bed. The fall hadn’t killed her son, but this sleep was going to if he didn’t wake soon. 

“From now until he wakes, you will come up here and feed him the milk and honey. I spend day and night here with him to make up for the ill-thought prayers I made and you will take the time out of your day for your ill-spoken words. Is that understood?”

The girl’s head snapped around fast and, even in the dim light, Catelyn could see the surprise on her face, “Yes, Lady Stark. Yes,” she nodded quickly.

“And when he does wake, you will bring him his meals and help him build his strength back up. Maester Luwin says he will never walk again if he wakes, but that doesn’t mean he won’t be able to move at all. He’ll need help sitting up and building up his arm strength again.”

“Yes, Lady Stark. I will. I’ll help Bran.”

“Very good,” there was more she could say. Catelyn probably could have charged the girl with changing his chamber pots, clothes, washing him, changing his bedding, and being his personal caretaker and she would have said yes. Her heart was too heavy to care about putting as much on the girl as she possibly could, “Now get out.”

The girl wasted no time in getting to her feet and scrambling out of the room as fast as she could.


	7. Linly

A lot happened in a very short amount of time. There was a fire in the library tower and she had run off with everyone else to help put it out before all the books burned. Linly liked books. Bran and Maester Luwin had done well in teaching her to read, though she was still learning. Lady Catelyn even let her read to Bran while he was still in his deep sleep. Her favorite to read to him were the storybooks. She had to help save them from being burned. 

Everyone found out later on that the fire had been started on purpose because someone had been trying to kill Bran. Lady Catelyn hadn’t gone to the fire and managed to hold off the would be assassin until Summer got there to defend Bran. As much as Lady Catelyn disliked the direwolves, from then on she allowed Summer in the room with him. The large wolf stayed at Bran’s side constantly.

The next surprise came when Lady Catelyn left Winterfell. No one knew where she was going, but many assumed it had to do with the attempt on her son’s life. Even Linly was smart enough to figure out that someone wouldn’t try to kill a young boy for no reason. He wasn’t in next in line to be Lord of Winterfell, he was comatosed, and if he woke he would be crippled. There was nothing to fear from Bran. The only reason someone would want him dead is because he knew something. If Lady Stark was gone from Winterfell, it was because she had an idea of who it was.

When Bran finally woke, she remembered running to his room as fast as she could. Knocking over maids and dropped whatever it was she had been doing to get to him. By the time she got there, she could barely get in the room for all the people there. It wasn’t just her stuck in the back waiting for their turn. Hodor was there too. The gentle giant was smiling and repeating the only word he knew. 

It had been a fortnight since Bran had woke. Before she left, Lady Stark told her that she was to keep her word about taking care of Bran. Linly didn’t mind to do it. Though she did think she would be happier about it, but she wasn’t. Bran didn’t wake up the same. She tried to sympathize with him. She tried to imagine how she would feel if she woke up to find out that she couldn’t use her legs anymore. His sullen mood was understandable, but her young mind had it in her head that he would wake up and things would be the way they were before. The fact that they weren’t was hard for her to deal with.

Still, at least he was alive and she got to spend time with him.

With a smile on her face, she carried a tray with food into his room, “Are you ready to break your fast?” she asked as she saw that he was already awake. Hodor was in there and was helping the boy into a sitting position. The master builder was working on putting in a handle that would hang from the rafters that he could grab and pull himself up with once his arm strength was a little better.

“No,” he said rather sullenly as he settled back against the pillows. Summer nuzzled down into the bedding next to him and sniffed the air a little.

“Well, you have to,” she set the tray down on the bed over his lap before pulling a piece of dried meat out of one of her apron pockets and tossing it in front of Summer’s muzzle, “You didn’t eat supper last night and you have to eat something. Hodor, can you go get the washing pan so Bran can wash his hands to eat?”

The giant smiled and nodded, “Hodor,” he responded before leaving the room.

“I’m not hungry.”

Linly looked him over silently. She didn’t want to fight with him, but that was really all it had been, “I’m getting better at cooking. Look,” she took the lid off a small clay jar on the tray, “I made hackberry jam for your toast.”

“I don’t want hackberry jams. I hate those.”

“Liar. You love them. Don’t be a brat,” she snipped, “You have to eat something. At least eat the bread, if nothing else.”

“I want to eat with my brother. Down in the hall. With everyone else…” his voice trailed off. He was just staring off out the window. It pained her to see him this way. It was as if all the energy had been drained from his body. His soul was dead right now.

“I’ll ask Lord Stark if he’ll have mid-day meal with you. I’m sure he’d like to,” Robb came to visit Bran often, but he was Lord of Winterfell right now and had many duties, “Maester Luwin says you’re not ready to get out of bed yet. You still have some healing to do. Now eat your bread.”

He did respond, which wasn’t uncommon these past few weeks. Bran stared off out the window a lot. No one could get him to say much. Old Nan would come in to tell him stories and he just told her that he hated her stories. Maester Luwin came in to give him his lessons, but he would just sit silently pretending that he didn’t hear the questions. That’s how it was with everyone now. Linly wanted to believe that he would eventually snap out of it. That he would regain his energy again and find a new use for it now that he couldn’t run and climb, “Old Nan’s been teaching me to sew and embroider. She says all girls should know how to do it.”

Digging through her other pocket, she pulled out a piece of fabric and held it up for him to see with a smile, “Look. It’s Summer,” the shape of the wolf was very rough and awkward, “I’m going to make it into a pillow for you. Old Nan is going to show me how to stuff it with feathers to make it nice and soft instead of with straw. Tenea says we have a few hens that are too old to lay eggs, so I’ll have plenty of feathers and she can show me how to braise a chicken. That means we’ll get to have chicken for supper in a few nights.”

His eyes shifted over to the cloth she was holding up for a moment before going back to the window. He wanted to be outside, “It doesn’t look like Summer.”

Linly dropped her hands to her lap and clenched the cloth tightly in her fingers, “Yes it does. I used the right color threads and everything.”

Bran didn’t respond again and she pursed her lips and tightened her jaw as she gripped the fabric a little tighter. Linly had held her tongue quite a bit since he woke. There was a lot he said or didn’t say that made her upset. He was outright rude sometimes and she was doing her best not to snap about it. Because she felt sorry for him. It wouldn’t help him to have people yelling at him, but he was getting on her last nerve about it. She still felt like she had to try and hold her tongue. This wasn’t his fault, she kept telling herself. 

“It’s my name day next week,” not that she really knew when it was. She’d never celebrated one before and didn’t intend to next week. Mother had just given her a general time of when she had been born when she had finally pestered the woman enough before she ran away. People of her standing didn’t really have name days. Perhaps a friend or a lover, if they were old enough to have one, would give them something special; but it tended to be a more noble thing to celebrate. Linly just needed something to talk about, “I’ll be eleven. Your name day will be soon,” that would be celebrated by all of Winterfell, she was sure, “I bet Old Nan will give you sweet plums. That’s what she gives everyone.”

The young Stark didn’t even blink or show any sign that he’d heard anything she said, “I bet they would taste better baked into some bread or a cake. Like a lemon cake, but with sweet plums. I can try to make it for your name day. Do you think you would like to try that?”

She didn’t know what to do as he didn’t answer her. She felt tears creeping into her eyes. It upset her that she had been so weepy since his fall. Linly enjoyed that people said she was tough and unladylike. Lately, she felt like a pathetic little girl. She didn’t know why this upset her so much. Normally, she preferred people to ignore her. Yet being ignored by him now, it shot a pain through her chest. 

Slowly, she started picking at the threads in the fabric, pulling apart the wolf head shape she had painstakingly made, “I was able to read through the whole Tales of the Old Raven without having to ask Maester Luwin to help me with any of the words. He says my handwriting is getting better too and that my counting isn’t bad. Not as terrible as it used to be. I can count to fifty without missing a number. Isn’t that wonderful?” she forced a smile, but she didn’t look up at him. Instead, her fingernails kept plucking at the threads. If Bran didn’t like it, there was no point in finishing it.

The first tear dotted on the fabric and she watched as it spread through the lines of the cloth. Linly couldn’t choke it back anymore. She stood fast and threw the cloth down on the bed next to him, “I promised your mother that I would take care of you, because I cared about you. Because you were my only friend. I know it’s not your fault, but you’re being a real cunt,” she had tried to curb her language lately, but it felt good to let it out, “You were my only friend and now I have no friends. If I hadn’t promised your mother that I would take care of you, I would just go back to Winter Town and crawl back to the whore house where I came from.”

“But I did promise. Until your mother gets back, I’ll do only what I said I would do and nothing more. Once she gets back…” Linly wrung her apron in her fingers tightly, looking down at her feet, and fighting to not let anymore tears fall, “...I’m going back to Winter Town. Mother was right when she said the only thing people from Winterfell are good for is forgetting their coin pouches when they leave in the morning.”

Angry, she grabbed the jar of hackberry jam off the tray and threw it into the fireplace. It smashed against the stones in the back and the fire started roasting it, filling the room slowly with a sweet roasted scent. Soon though, it would start to burn. Someone would have to clean out the fireplace to clean it up to get the smell to stop. Linly didn’t care though. She wouldn’t be the one to clean it, “Do you have anything to say at all?!”

Bran finally looked over at her, but his response wasn’t what she had expected, “Are you going to keep talking?” it shot through her hard, making her chest hurt even more than it already had been. 

Biting her lower lip almost hard enough to draw blood, Linly stared back at him until he looked back out the window, “You don’t want me to talk? Fine. I’ll never talk to you again. I hate you,” she hissed out her last words. It was wrong of her to say. Deep down, she knew she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t hate Bran, but she was angry and she couldn’t stop the words before they came out of her mouth.

She turned to storm out of the room and saw Hodor standing there holding the washing pan. He looked confused witnessing the scene. Linly felt embarrassed. She wasn’t even sure if Hodor could understand what was happening, but the fact that he saw it at all was humiliating. It made her feel more angry. 

The girl rushed over and grabbed the washing pan from the simpleton’s hands and dumped the water on the floor, “Let him eat with dirty hands. His mother didn’t say I had to make sure he was bathed. If he wants to be clean, he can ask for it himself,” she slammed the pan down on the floor before stomping past the giant.

“...Hodor?”


	8. Bran

It took some time, but he started to come around. He had a tense moment with his brother where he admitted that he wished he was dead. Wished that the fall had killed him. It was painful to wake up and realize his legs didn’t work. Not just that they didn’t work, but he couldn’t even feel them. They were just dead attachments to his body. Useless weight that he had to look at every day and know was there even when the blankets and furs covered them. Bran really did wish the fall had killed him. It would have been better than this.

Things got a little better as he was finally allowed to leave his bed. Hodor would carry him everywhere, but it was better than sitting in his bed anymore. He could sit, with help, at the head table with his brother, Maester Luwin, and Ser Rodrik to eat. He got to sit on on his brother commanding Winterfell on a daily basis as their father had done. The lessons with Maester Luwin were more boring than ever as he saw his chances of becoming captain of the Kingsguard disappear and a life of books laid out in front of him. He’d never fight for his family. Instead, he would sit behind a table for the rest of his life looking down at stacks of papers and books. He’d never be able to be a bannerman for Robb, because he’d never truly be the Lord of his own keep. But there was some comfort in being able to go outside again and breath in the crisp air of Winterfell.

When the Imp came back through Winterfell, Bran hadn’t expected much. To be presented with the ability to ride a horse again was something he hadn’t thought would happen. The short man admitted that he used a similar design so that he could ride a horse properly because he refused to ride a pony. Since then, he spent a lot of time on horseback. It was as close to his previous life as he could come. Something he could do with little assistance from someone else once he was on the horse. 

It did lead to a dangerous incident with some wildlings, but he’d survived and had Osha as a companion now because of it. The wildling woman was different from everyone else he knew. It took some time for people to trust her around him, but she ended up being an asset. With Hodor beside him, no one feared what the wildling woman might do to him. 

Hodor took him to the Godswood a lot. He liked it there. It was nice to sit in front of the weirwood tree and watch Osha and Hodor. That’s where they were heading today, “Hodor, stop,” he said softly as he looked over the large man’s shoulder as they started through the gate to the Godswood. 

“Something wrong?” Osha asked.

“I want to go back in,” which was a lie. Bran never wanted to go in anymore. He’d sleep outside if they would let him. Not that he slept much anymore since the dreams started.

The wildling wasn’t stupid like some people thought. Her eyes scanned the trees and saw what he did. It was Linly. She was picking up nuts from the trees in the Godswood. Walnuts, mostly, “Does the girl upset you?”

“I just...want to go in…”

It didn’t take long for Bran to feel bad and ashamed of himself for the way he had acted towards Linly. The girl had been a good friend to him and taken care of him, but he’d treated her like she wasn’t even a person at all. He’d held onto the destroyed piece of fabric that she had tried to stitch Summer into. It sat with all it’s threads under his pillows. He’d tried to talk to her, but she ignored him. Apparently he’d cut her too deeply and Bran feared the damage he’d caused was never going to heal.

When she came into his room, it was always a quick affair. She would set the food on the stool near the door and leave for his breaking the fast meal. Hodor would bring it to him when he came in shortly after. Bran had tried to goad her into a conversation yesterday by making Hodor leave the food tray on the bed with him. When she came in and saw it wasn’t on the stool, he waited until she got close enough and tried to talk to her. Linly ignored him, so he tried to grab her hand. 

Bran had never been slapped before. It hurt when her other hand connected with his cheek. She didn’t even say anything as he dropped her hand and she snatched up the tray fast and ran from the room with it. She hadn’t even brought it in this morning. He heard her telling Hodor to give it to him from outside the door. It was painful, but not as painful as seeing her now.

She was sitting on the stump of a tree and leaned over picking through the leaves for walnuts. Her apron pockets were full. She’d be leaving soon, but he didn’t want her to see him. Bran watched as she sat back and stuffed a few nuts into her pocket. Her hands went to the other pocket and she pulled out a small container, likely to make room for more nuts. 

Hodor turned to take him back inside, but he craned his head around to keep watching her for as long as he could. That was one of Old Nan’s boxes. She got them from Winter Town and they were always filled with sweet plums that she gave out for name days. Most people didn’t like them, but no one ever turned them down. He remembered Linly telling him that it was almost her name day. It must be today, he realized.

It was today and she was sitting alone in the Godswood collecting walnuts and eating sweet plumps. She had told him that she didn’t have any friends anymore. The look on her face told him that was true. She looked like she was going to cry. He wondered how much she cried now. Bran had his brothers, Hodor, and Osha. Who did Linly have? Maester Luwin and Old Nan? Those weren’t friends. Those were caretakers.

Just before Hodor rounded the corner, he watched her stand up and toss the container into the small lake in front of the weirwood tree. Resting his head against the giant’s back, he remembered her saying that she was going to go back to Winter Town. Bran was young, but he knew enough of what that meant. He heard Robb and Theon talk about the place Linly was born in. Bran didn’t see the appeal of what someone could get out of a place like that, but he knew Linly didn’t belong there. She’d get hurt. 

“She works in the kitchen with me sometimes. You know her?” Osha prodded him a bit about it, “Sweet girl. Says she’s going to leave Winterfell.”

“She won’t leave. She doesn’t have anywhere to go.”

The wildling smiled at him, “I had nowhere to go, but I left the North anyway. You don’t have to have somewhere to go to leave where you’re at. Someone said you and her used to be friends.”

“...we were. I was mean to her though...now she hates me.”

“She don’t hate you, Little Bird. Sweet Girl makes you hackberry jam and doesn’t let anybody else touch it. She loves you.”

Bran had noticed the jam. He assumed someone else had been making it. He did like it, despite what he had told her. She knew he was lying and she had kept making it. Though hearing her say that Linly loved him made his cheeks flush, “She doesn’t.”

“She does. Sweet Girl is in love and her heart is breaking. You’re never too young to know love. I met my Bruni when I was your age,” she had told him of her husband a few times before, “I knew I loved that man from the moment we met. Girls, we know these things early. It’s you boys who don’t get it. You will know it one day and you will tell her.”

He knew he loved people. He loved his family. He loved Theon. He loved Maester Luwin and Old Nan, even if they bothered him. He loved Hodor and Summer. He even loved Osha a little even though she had been willing to kill him when they first met. He loved Ser Rodrik for keeping them safe. He loved a lot of people in a lot of different ways. Why did admitting he loved Linly feel hard to do? It wasn’t any different from his love for Theon, Hodor, or Osha, so why was it so hard? It shouldn’t have been.

“She doesn’t. I don’t.”

“You can think that all you want, Little Bird. Wait too long to tell her and it will be too late. She will be gone and you will never see her again. Sweet Girl will find new home and you will be forgotten. A memory of old love for her to remember in her old age. A footnote in her life. Tell her now and you may have the chance for it to bloom into real love.”

Bran could feel his face getting hot, “...we’re just children, Osha…”

“Love is a feeling in your heart and your bones. I ain’t saying all love is right, cause it ain’t. But sweet young love is never wrong. You don’t get to see that often, so it’s special when it happens. Where I’m from, you have to fight for everything. Ain’t nothing handed to you. Not even love. I had to fight for Bruni and he for me. You don’t have to do that, Little Bird. You get all the love you could ever want. So don’t you dare say it ain’t there,” her voice was stern and deep, “You disrespect everyone who has to fight for it by denying it.”

The crippled Stark went quiet and just turned his head away from her as Hodor brought him back inside to his room. It was nearly supper time. Lately, he had been going down to the main hall to eat beside his brothers. He didn’t feel much like eating tonight. Osha tossed the furs over him and Summer climbed onto the bed with her, “Osha…” he called out to the wildling as she was starting out the door.

“Yes, Little Bird?”

“What if I tell her and she doesn’t feel the same? We’re just children…” he couldn’t shake that.

“Then you were already too late and missed your chance, but at least you still tried. Tell her you are sorry for whatever it is you said. Apologies are for your kind. You get that luxury, use it. If you were one of my kind, you would have been left out to die when you were crippled. Instead, you are a southerner and highborn and spoiled. You get these options, so use them because other people don’t get to.”

Bran knew he should have felt offended by the accusation at being spoiled, but it was true. Not that it was his fault, but it was true, “Can you close the door when you leave? I want to sleep.”

Osha nodded lightly, “Yes, Little Bird.”


	9. Osha

Fucking southerners. They all thought themselves so special and complicated. None of them were willing to accept that they could be average. They wanted so badly to believe they were special from one another. None of them could admit that they were meant to shovel shit for the rest of their lives. Everyone thought they had it in them to be a Lord or Lady or Knight or Princess or King or Queen. Why couldn’t they understand that someone had to be born to be less than that? The stool seat needed legs to stand on and those legs were created to be legs. No one started shaping a sear and suddenly decide it would do better as a leg. A leg was created because it was meant to be a leg.

If it wasn’t imperative that they move south and escape over the wall, she would have preferred to stay in the true north. Away from all this bullshittery. It was mind numbing to deal with on a daily basis. That was why she had to get out of here. 

There was also the fact that things were going to go terribly bad. She could smell it in the air. The threat wasn’t just from the north anymore. It was right here. The Little Bird had said the sea would come to swallow this place and he was right. The sea was here and it was going to destroy everything. It was going to drown them all if they didn’t do something. What could they do though? One wildling, a cripple, a child, a simpleton, two direwolves, an old maester, an old storyteller, and a whore’s daughter. 

Between herself and the wolves, they could probably take a good deal of them down before they fell. The whore’s daughter might put up a good fight, but she was still just a child too. The little thing wouldn’t get a quick death either. It would be slow and violating. The rest of them would be killed, because they were of no more use or posed too much danger. Osha imagined she might be kept for a few days and used by the men, but they’d tire of wondering if she was going to find a way to kill them. The whore’s daughter was someone they wouldn’t have to worry about that with.

Osha liked the whore’s daughter. Linly, that’s what they called her. Sometimes Osha liked to call her Sweet Girl. She wasn’t sweet though. She swore like a true northerner and Osha knew the girl had injured more than one man who had tried to make her a woman. She had met more than one girl over the wall that had matured early in her bleeding. It was going to be a long, hard journey for the whore’s daughter. One that was not likely to end well. She would have to fight all the time.

With the feeling of dread in her bones, Osha decided it was time to leave this place. She would take them all with her if she had to. It wasn’t something she had to do. Osha could have got out on her own and been miles away before anyone knew she was gone. But the Starks had taken her in, even after she had tried to kill Bran, and treated her well. They didn’t have to do that. They trusted her to be alone with the young boys and even had her shackles removed. Maester Luwin protected her from that sea dog once. The Sweet Girl gave her berries and extra meat. The youngest Stark always laughed at her jokes. The old storyteller told stories to her as if she had been there her whole life. Osha felt as if she owed it to them to try to help them escape.

That sea dog, he called himself Theon, had dragged the Little Bird out and forced him to give up his home. Stealing the home away from a cripple boy was laughable. How his men accepted that, she didn’t know. Back home, a man who thought it a victory to take from a cripple would have been thrown to the giants. Even once the cripple Lord of Winterfell yielded, the sea dog still took revenge on Rodrik. Osha had no love for the master-at-arms, but the sea dog had promised that none would be harmed if the boy yielded. He broke that promise and poorly beheaded the man. 

The sea dog was no man. The cripple Little Bird was more of a man than he would ever be.

An oathbreaker was an oathbreaker no matter where one was and the sea dog would pay for it one day.

Osha would not be the one to pass that judgement though. As much as she would have liked to. Instead, her job was to get them out before terrible things continued to happen. It was only a matter of time before the sea dog tired of caring for the two Stark boys. He’d kill them. Of that, she was sure. He was an easily irritated sea dog. It would happen sooner rather than later.

The Stark boys weren’t allowed out of the main building anymore and the only reason she was allowed to see the cripple was because she helped care for him. She took advantage of this and slipped into his room. He was sitting in his bed, as usual, and the Sweet Girl was sitting by his bedside. Their hands were clasped together for a moment, but they quickly pulled apart when she came in. Both of them looked bashful.

Young love was such a sweet thing. Osha wasn’t as bitter and cold hearted as some thought she was. She merely had a tough skin. Something she knew the whore’s daughter had too. It was something one developed. If things went the way they planned, the cripple would develop one too. Love here in the south was a different matter than it was in the north. It was made all the more complex by all the luxuries they had. Love couldn’t just be love here. 

Their love, should anything become of it if they survived this, would be complicated in a way that wouldn’t be allowed where she was from. The crippled Stark would never survive beyond the wall. He wouldn’t have lived to even meet the whore’s daughter to fall in love. But here in the south, there it was warm and just living was easier, they would have to learn what it meant to have a complicated love.

She was pleased that the Little Bird had taken her words to heart and had repaired the damage between them. It wasn’t important right now though. Surviving was really the only thing of importance right now, “We have to leave. Soon. The sooner, the better.”

“Leave where?” the cripple always asked questions.

“Doesn’t matter. Just not here. Keep going south, that’s what we need to do.”

She watched the two of them trade glances, “She’s right. Theon isn’t in his right mind. He’ll kill you and Rickon. You two are more trouble than you’re worth to him. He already has Winterfell. You need to get somewhere safe.”

“Listen to Sweet Girl. She’s smart.”

The boy looked between the two of them, “You’ll come with, Linly.”

Osha was somewhat surprised when the girl shook her head, “I can’t. It’s too many people. You, Rickon, Osha, Hodor, Summer, and Shaggydog...it’s too many as is. Anymore and it will just slow you down more.”

“She’s right. If you weren’t cripple, I would say to leave the giant behind. I’d say to leave the wolves, but they can at least fend for themselves. Too many people and we won’t be able to feed ourselves either.”

“Someone has to stay with Maester Luwin and Old Nan anyway. I’m not leaving them here alone with those fucking cunts.”

Osha could see it on their faces, neither of them wanted it to be this way. At least the whore’s daughter was smart enough to see that it had to be that way, “Listen to her, Little Bird,” the truth was that the girl wouldn’t be safe here alone. She would be in constant danger. Right now, she could hide up here and with Hodor. Once they were gone, she would be at risk. She was willing to risk that though.

The wild woman could see it in his face, he didn’t want to agree to it. He just repaired what was broken between them and now he was going to cut it off completely. Deep down, he likely knew there was a chance of what she was going to be staying here with and that he might not see her again. Osha felt that she had done right to convince him to speak his heart to her. As painful as this parting would be for them both, it was better to know there had been love than to never know what it felt like. She loved her Bruni with all her heart and he had been a good man. She wouldn’t change what she had with him for the world, no matter how painful it had been in the end. It would have been easier to never love him, but it would have been an empty feeling to live that way. 

Their love was still innocent. It would be painful and hard, but it wouldn’t be long lasting.

“I’ll come back,” he promised. A sweet little lie to make it easier on them.

“I know,” a kind acceptance, but the whore’s daughter knew it was a lie.

“I’ll deal with the sea dog. You be ready to go. I will tell the giant and your brother. Sweet Girl, you go be with the Maester or the Hag. The more you are seen with them, the better.”

The whore’s daughter nodded and grabbed a small lidded jar from the bed table and pressed it into his hands, “Put this in your bag. It’s hackberry jam. I want you to take it with you,” Osha tried not to roll her eyes, “I know it won’t help you much, but it’s the only thing I’m decent at making.”

“That’s sweet and all, but you need to go now and we need to get ready,” Osha knew it was wrong to push them through their good-byes, but they really were children. It could go on forever if she let it. She couldn’t let that happen.

She remembered the last night she had with Bruni. It had been more cold that night than usual. They huddled together for warmth. It wasn’t sexual at all. They just held each other. Wrapped in each others arms and listening to each other breathing. In that moment, she remembered that she was his and he was hers. No one else in the world had mattered then. It was beautiful and sweet. If she had known that would be her last night with him, what would she have said? Osha knew they would have lied to each other too. Like Little Bird and Sweet Girl were doing. Making false promises to see each other again.

So young and they both already knew how to play the game of hearts.


	10. Linly

Three years. That was how long she had been at Winterfell. She had seen two name days since then and was coming up on a third. It hadn’t been easy, but she had survived until now. She had been ten when she came here and she had spent most of that first year happy for the first time in her life. Meeting Bran and becoming friends with him was something so new to her and it had made her heart feel so light. It all went sour very fast though. Bran fell and spent the rest of the year unconscious. 

The second year wasn’t easy. She spent a lot of her time tending to him and trying to engage him, but he rejected her. Treating her like she was no better than a dog. It had hurt so much. She’d never felt that sort of pain before in her life. She’d never known someone to care for her and then have that taken away. The pain was unbearable at first. So much so that when he did try to speak with her, all she could do was lash out at him. Slapping him as hard as she could. 

That wildling woman helped to make the third more bearable. Bran apologized and told her that he hoped they could be friends again some day. He admitted how much he cared for her. That he missed her. At first, she wanted to tell him that she didn’t care and that it didn’t matter what he wanted. Those weren’t the words that came out of her mouth though. She hugged him and kissed his cheek and told him that she cared about him too. 

Even with Theon’s betrayal and Ser Rodrik’s death, it was at least easier to have Bran to talk to.

Osha was right when she said it was dangerous to stay here. A lot of people still discredited her as some poorly whore’s daughter. They didn’t think she understood anything. They didn’t hold their tongues when she was around. A dumb maid was all they thought of her. She heard Theon’s annoyances when he voiced them. 

It wasn’t just dangerous for the Stark boys. Theon’s men were starting to notice her. Not because they thought she was listening in on them, but because they were looking her over and whispering. She was almost thirteen and she had been bleeding for several years now. She worked hard to keep it a secret, but it was difficult. Old Nan made her wear thick dresses and aprons to try to hide her budding body, but it was getting difficult for that too. If she were a trueborn girl, they likely wouldn’t have given her a second thought. As it was, she was trash to them and trash was meant to be used before it was thrown away.

Her plan was to stay here and keep Old Nan and Maester Luwin as safe as she could and deal with the consequences as they arose. Osha had told her the same thing he mother had when they were planning to start her working. To just go limp and let her mind wander. That it would be easier that way if it happened. Osha told her that she could fight them if she wanted to. That they might tire of her and move on, but they might also kill her if they tired of her. Unlike her mother, the wildling gave her more options. Not that either option was appealing.

Bran and Rickon had fled several days ago. Theon was furious. Apparently, Osha had seduced him and then ran off with the boys and Hodor. It was clever of her. Linly was sad without Bran here. Everything was more sullen. She feared anytime Theon came back that he had found the boys. Osha would keep them safe, she was sure of it. She was a wildling after all. Old Nan said wildling women were witches and could summon daemons from the unholy lands. She would protect them.

“Hold still, Girl,” Old Nan threatened, “Pull it tighter. We need to flatten her out as much as possible.”

The other maid pulled harder on the bandages around her chest and she gasped a little, “Why are we doing this? Who cares if they notice her breasts? Better her than one of us,” the other girl sneered. 

“Do what you’re told, Ida. Linly doesn’t deserve that anymore than you do. Can you still breath, Girl?” Old Nan knew her name, but rarely used it. 

“Yes. It hurts a little.”

“It’ll hurt a lot more if they start getting their hands on you. Now, you don’t take those off unless you absolutely have to. Do you understand?”

Linly nodded, “Yes, Nan.”

“Good. Ida, get out,” the other maid sighed and shuffled out of the room, “Come here,” she walked over to stand in front of the old woman. Her shaky, old hands reached up and rested on her hips, “Nothing to be done about these hips. Body of a whore’s daughter,” she tsked and shook her head, “Don’t tie your apron so tight so it doesn’t pinch into your waist. That’ll help a little.”

“Why are you helping me?” the question had to finally be asked. Old Nan had treated her different from the other girls since she came here.

“Because someone has to. You don’t have a mother to care for you, no father to claim you, no relatives to foster you…” Linly could tell it was more than that. Those were just excuses that she used to justify what she was doing.

“Do you tell stories about so many things that you’ve forgotten how to tell the truth?”

The woman’s wrinkled eyes turned up at her, “Don’t test me, Girl.”

“...I’m sorry. I’m grateful, Nan.”

“I know you are. You won’t say it, but I know you helped them get away. A Stark should always be in Winterfell, but right now it’s important that those loyal to the Starks remain in Winterfell. We need to keep it safe. Master Brandon has feelings for you,” which made her cheeks warm to hear someone else say, “With all the tragedy that happened, I don’t think anyone will mind a trueborn falling in love with a whore’s daughter. I think all they will see is two people in love in a sea of blood, pain, and sadness. That will be more important than who was born from where.”

“Master Brandon doesn’t love me,” she had learned when to use his name and his title depending on who she was speaking with.

“Nonsense,” Bran had said he cared for her, but that word hadn’t come from either of their lips. They were still children, even if they were both coming up on their thirteenth years, “You’re everything a boy from the North could want. A girl born of the north, but with features of the south. That blond hair and those green eyes. And you’re smart. Much smarter than you let on to people. You learned to read and write in just over a year. You’d be wasted at a brothel. Master Brandon will return with an army to take back Winterfell and you will become his betrothed. With no one above him to tell him he can’t because you’re a whore’s daughter, you two will be wed when you’re both of age.”

If she wasn’t already having trouble breathing, she would at Old Nan’s vision of the future, “Is that why you’re being kind to me? Because you think I’ll be Lady of Winterfell some day and you want me to keep you around? Keep your place safe? I won’t marry him. I can’t. I don’t want to marry anyone. I’m not special.”

The old woman stared at her for a moment, “Sit,” she ordered and Linly obied. These days, she listened to orders more often. Mostly because she had seen what happened to people who disobeyed Theon and his men. The Starks rarely punished simple things, especially where children were involved, but these men didn’t discriminate. She had already been heavily questioned once and her face was still bruised from it. Theon swore if she knew anything about where the boys went and he found out about it, he’d cut her head off.

“I have a story to tell you…”

Linly didn’t have time for this, “Nan, I should get back to my duties. I need to finish the dishes soon.”

“After my story. Now be quiet,” to which she sighed and folded her hands in her lap, “Good.”

“There was once two young girls, sisters, who lived here in the north. Not girls of good houses, but good girls nonetheless. Both were very beautiful and there were many men who viad for their affections. One with hair the color of black oil and the other with hair as red as a fire. They were named Raven and Rose. They were very kind girls who took very good care of their small family home. Their mother passed of cold during a harsh winter, but the girls were strong willed. They continued on. Toiled and worked their fingers to the bone to support their ailing father and to keep a roof over their heads.”

“Raven met a kindly man who won her heart. His name was Dale, his family was from one of the small valleys in the north. Strong, hardy people who believed in the old gods and hard work. He would carve her pretty birds out of the wood he lumbered. They met young and fell deeply in love. They were soon married and he carried her off to his home in the valley. They had a small home with winter pansies growing all around it.”

“Raven bore Dale three sons. Sadly, none of them survived their first winters. Soon, the pansies didn’t grow anymore. She feared she was cursed and that her body was barren. One evening, their little home was set ablaze. Dale left the embers burning and one rolled loose of the fireplace. Their home was gone. They had no children. It was a sad time for kind Raven.”

“Dale was a skilled lumberer though. They traveled back to her home and he soon found work for a trueborn family as their master builder. Raven was given position as a maid of the house. It was good, honest work. But her body still ached with pain. It was her heart. Something was missing. She tended to the lady of the house’s children, but she craved a child of her own. Try as they might, Raven never had another child.”

Linly didn’t find the story all that interesting. Old Nan had told much more interesting stories in the past than this. Still, she listened on.

“While traveling through the town near the family keep, Raven had to pass by the brothel. It was a seedy place that she feared. To her shock, it wasn’t some common whore standing outside in the cold, barely dressed. It was her sweet sister, Rose. Rose was shivering, toes blackened, body barely covered, and offering herself to any and every man that walked by. Raven could hardly believe what she was seeing.”

“Raven realized what it was that had cursed her life. She had abandoned her family and therefore was allowed to have no family of her own. She had left her sister and ailing father to fend for themselves so she could be off and marry the man of her dreams. The lady of the house took pity and allowed Raven to bring her poorly sister in. Shortly after, her sister passed of consumption. Try as Raven might to save her sister, all she could do in the end was make her comfortable as the disease took her.”

“As the years passed and Dale passed too, Raven became a bitter woman. She did her duties and did them well. She earned a special place at the lady of the house’s side, but her heart had turned as black as her hair. She was hard on all the other maids who served under her. Not tolerating the slightest mistakes. Beating them and punishing them in front of the others to humiliate them.”

“One evening, a young girl came to the keep. She was at least ten, but no more than thirteen. She was cold and hungry and sickly. Raven was called to the gate, because the girl claimed to be a relative. Raven took one look at the girl and turned her away. Told the street rat to go back where she came from.”

“They found the poor girl’s frozen body two days later outside the keep. Her red hair looking like blood against the snow. Clutched in her small fingers was a tiny, carved bird…”

Old Nan went quiet and Linly stared at her, her mouth hanging open a little. Many of the old woman’s stories ended in death. They were meant to teach a lesson or warn, but this wasn’t just death. This was sadness. Complete sadness. Nothing like what Old Nan had said before. Her eyes darted around the old woman’s room for a moment. She was looking for something and found it sitting above the fireplace. A small carved bird. Linly had seen it a hundred or more times before since she came to Winterfell three years ago. 

She flinched as she felt Old Nan’s fingers touch her hand. She brought her eyes back to the old woman’s face, “Sometimes we help people because we don’t want to repeat the mistakes we made in the past. Sometimes we help people because they can’t help themselves. Sometimes we help people because it’s the right thing to do. And sometimes, just sometimes, we help people because it’s all of those things at once.”

Coming to Winterfell had softened her. In her ten years before coming here, she couldn’t remember ever crying about anything. Now she cried all the time. The tears started leaking down her face and she flung herself out to hug the old woman, “I’ll behave. I promise.”

“I know you’ll try, Girl. You’ll try,” the woman pat her back softly with one hand and stroked her hair with the other, “Now, go get to work. Don’t give them reason to notice you by getting behind.”


	11. Old Nan

There was only so much an old woman could do to protect someone. She’d been so focused on what could be done to Linly physically, she forgot about the girl’s poor mind. Had she known what was happening down in the yard, she would have ordered the girl to her room and not let her out. As it was, she only found out when she heard the screams.

Her old legs carried her as fast as they could down to the yard where she saw the whole scene. She covered her mouth with one of her shaky hands at the sight of the two badly burned bodies hanging. There was no doubt that they were children’s bodies. Theon was standing nearby looking as cocky as ever. Down below, Linly was being held by one of the other maids. The poor thing was in the mud sobbing and screaming.

“I didn’t want to do it, but they gave me no choice. I gave them every chance to return peacefully,” Theon stated and Nan wished she could slap him.

“You’re a monster! Rickon was a child and Bran was a cripple!” Linly snapped between her sobs, “You murdered them!” the other maid was trying to keep her under control, but the savage little girl who had come to Winterfell was coming back out.

Linly got up fast, knocking the other girl back, and rushed at the Ironborn, “Linly!” she cried out, but there was no point in it. Nothing would stop her. She looked crazed. Her blond hair whipped around her head as she ran. She pulled the knife from her apron pocket and Nan worried for her life. No doubt seeing Bran’s broken and burned body had shut off whatever sanity the girl had.

One of the Ironborn was faster than her though. He reached out and grabbed her around the waist. Lifting the poor girl from the ground. Her feet still running for a moment before switching to flailing wildly, “This is a high spirited one. I think she meant to kill you, Theon,” to which they all had a laugh. All of them except Theon. He didn’t look pleased.

He jumped down from his stand and walked over to her slowly, “You were his little friend. The clueless one who didn’t know where he’d run off to.”

“Murderer!” she screamed, the Ironborn holding down her arms, but she was still clutching the knife tightly in her fingers.

Theon reached out and grabbed her chin. All Nan could think about was the awful things he could do to her. Strip her down, whip her, throw her naked to his men, or just kill her right there. Instead, he raised his other hand up and brought it down fast against her cheek. His hand her chin kept her from moving as he gave her several hard slaps with the back of his hand. The knife dropped from her hand and her body went limp. Blood dripped from her lips and Theon finally let her chin go. She slumped against the Ironborn holding her, “Learn your place, Bitch. Don’t be stupid and let yourself be the next body hanging here.”

As big as Theon talked, Nan knew people well enough after her long years of watching them. He was sick over what he had done to those boys. She could see it in his face. Theon was never good at hiding his emotions. He wasn’t as hardened as the other Ironborns who had come with him to take Winterfell. He never would have survived growing up on the Iron Islands, that much she was sure. It was better for him that he had come become Lord Stark’s ward. He had been given a life he never would have received back home and there was something in his eyes that told her that he knew he had made a mistake.

Despite that, he wasn’t going to back down. Theon was ready to throw his surrogate family down into the mud and that included everyone who was loyal to them. Everyone here at Winterfell was in danger. Nan was too old to save herself. Her roots were deep here and she could never pull the free, even if she tried. Yet she wasn’t too old to save someone else.

She moved slowly closer to the one holding Linly, “You have to make an example of her, Theon,” the Ironborn said lowly. She watched Theon’s face twist a little, “You got the Masters and Ladies with the old man, you got old and the weak with the boys, now seal it all with this bitch. No one goes unpunished,” her fingers clenched together tightly. If they killed her right now, that was it. There would be no more help for her. Nan could never wrestle her free. It would be a waste of both their lives, “No mercy, Theon.”

“Put her in the kennels. Let her sleep with her fellow dogs tonight and she’ll be whipped in the morning.”

“Now, Theon,” the Ironborn growled.

“No. In the morning. The boys were enough for today. Draw out the misery.”

Nan did her best not to sigh in relief as the Ironborn huffed and yanked her upright and started dragging her off to the kennels. The girl wouldn’t last until the morning, Nan was sure of it. She didn’t trust those Ironborns in the slightest. Theon had promised that no one would be harmed if Bran surrendered and now Ser Rodrik, Maester Luwin, Rickon, and Bran were dead. It was likely the Wildling bitch and Hodor were killed as well. Linly would be dead by morning and Theon would be claiming she had fought when they tried to lock her up and that they had no other choice. Several full grown men against one thirteen year old girl, yet they would still claim it was the only way.

They would wait until it was dark, go down there, have their fill of her, and beat her to death when they were done. Such things didn’t happen at Winterfell with the Starks, but she had seen them happen in other places when she had travelled with Lady Catelyn when she was younger. These men didn’t respect Theon enough to obey him. They wouldn’t leave her to be whipped in the morning.

Their backs to her, Nan reached down and picked up the dropped knife from the mud and slipped it into her sleeve before approaching Theon, “Must you do this? She’s a child, Theon.”

The Ironborn whipped around and looked at her with disgusted, “That’s Lord Theon. Lord of Winterfell. Lord Greyjoy, you old crone,” he sneered.

“I wiped your nose as a child, I will call you as I please,” she snipped, “She’s a child. You destroyed everything that mattered to her. For someone who has nothing, taking away the few things they manage to get can make them act erratically. There’s a story about…”

“Shut your fucking mouth, Hag,” he snapped, “Or you’ll be the next one whipped,” Theon was done as he stormed off from her.

Nan had to do something. 

She waited for the right time though. It would have been foolish for her to walk into the kennels and try to get her out right away. No. Nan waited until the Ironborns were enjoying their supper in the hall and boozing themselves into a slumber with the girls that had brought up from Winter Town, one with suspiciously buttered toast colored hair. 

The wind was cold outside tonight. Winter was coming, that much she was sure. It would be a long, cold, hard winter when it finally came. Many would not survive it. Winterfell was supposed to be a safeplace for when the long winters came. A place where people could seek shelter, get food, and stay warm for periods of time. Nan didn’t see that happening with the Ironborns here. Many would die in Winter Town and the other villages this winter. It was hard enough to manage the regular winters. One long one would leave the North devastated with the way Winterfell was right now. She prayed to the Old Gods to hold off on the winter until the Starks could reclaim their home.

Moving to the kennels, she tossed dried meat into each of the cages as she passed them to keep the hounds quiet until she got to a small one. Kneeling down, her old knees protesting the movement, she set the small bag down on the ground and slowly opened the door. Inside, the poor girl was huddled up on the straw shivering. Her hands were bound to the bars and her face, even in the dark Nan could see, was covered in mud and blood. Her face was swollen and bruised.

Nan pulled the knife free of her sleeve and reached in to start cutting the rope, “Come on, Girl, get up. They’ll be coming for you soon.”

She groaned softly, “Nan…” she said softly.

“Yes, now get up. I know it’s hard, but if you don’t, you will die here.”

“...I said I would behave...but I didn’t...I’m sorry…” her voice was slow and soft, but at least she moved a bit. Slowly shifting to the front of the cage once her hands were free.

“You’re young, you can’t help yourself,” she was sure the girl had been hit before by people, but she’d never been beaten before. Theon’s hits had taken their toll on her. It was hours later, but she was still slow to move and slurred in her words. They didn’t have the time to wait for her to recover, “I’m going to get you some water for your face,” she hadn’t realized what a mess the girl really was.

Nan was only gone for what felt like a moment. It was likely at least ten to get from the water bucket and back. It was enough time for one of those drunks to make their way into the kennel. Nan couldn’t see which one it was, but it didn’t really matter. The girl was on the ground flailing to push him off and she slipped the knife back out of her sleeve as she came up behind them.

“Shut up. You should be grateful for a good fucking before you’re whipped to death,” he laughed. If she weren’t used to all the vulgarities of life, it might have made her feel ill.

Instead, she drove the knife into his side and when he howled and reared back, she reached around and dragged the blade across his throat. Linly scrambled back fast, the attack having sobered her up from her pain, but she was still covered in quite a bit of blood, “Y-you killed him…” she said in a fast, but hushed tone, her green eyes wide.

“You’ll need to get used to that. Death is a part of all women’s lives. You fight and you survive, because if you don’t...you die,” she wiped the blade off on her dress and handed it over to Linly, “Take it. You’ll need it.”

“Wh-where am I going to go?” sitting on the ground, dress bloodied, dirty, and now torn with her hair and face a mess; Nan realized how young she still was. Thirteen was an appropriate age to be betrothed, but she was still a child. As wild and savage as she had it in her to be, she was still a scared little child, “I can’t...I can’t go to Winter Town.”

“No. No you can’t. You’re going somewhere else,” she grabbed the small bag off the ground and shoved it into Linly’s hands, “Some supplies. They should get you by for a few days if you use them well. You know how to hunt rabbits?” she knew the girl could gather mushrooms, berries, and nuts; but she’d need more than that to survive.

“Yes. I don’t want to go. I’m scared.”

“I know you are, but you’re strong.”

“Where am I going?”

Nan didn’t want to do this. She would rather hide the girl in the crypts or one of the towers in the hopes that the Starks came back to reclaim their home. Sadly, wars could go on for years. It could be a long time before the Starks came back, if any were even still alive anymore, “Somewhere dangerous, but safer than here. You’re going to be stronger for this. I promise.”


	12. Bran

Warging was still a very new feeling for him. It felt so strange to think that it was something he could do. It was one thing to realize he was a greenseer, but finding out that he was a warg too was something else. Jojen said he’d never heard of someone who could do both before. Jojen seemed concerned when he first warged into Hodor, though the situation had called for it and he hadn’t done it on purpose. The other greenseer said it wasn’t right to warg into other people. Bran didn’t see what was so bad about it. It had helped them greatly.

It was difficult for him not to explore what all he could do with this new ability. The natural source for his curiosity was Summer. It was incredibly freeing to be inside the wolf’s body. He could feel the wind running through his fur as he ran at great speeds through the forest. To feel the ache in his strong legs when he would finally stop. The power that ran through his body as he saw prey and lunged in for a kill.

Meera wasn’t happy that he spent so much time in Summer’s body. The siblings agreed that it was dangerous to do it. They said he would lose his mind if he stayed there too long or too often. There were times when he didn’t see that as such a bad thing. Would it really be so terrible to lose himself inside the mind of his Direwolf when the alternative was being a cripple? They said he would forget them, Hodor, and his family. But how long would the Reeds be with him? Were any of his family still even alive? Hodor would always be Hodor though.

He liked meeting the Reeds. Meera and Jojen had been of great help to them along the way. In the end, he made the decision that he needed to go north of the wall. Osha refused to go. Had they not met the Reeds, it would just be him and Hodor on their way. They wouldn’t have survived. Osha took Rickon and promised to keep the youngest Stark as safe as possible, while the rest of them moved further north.

It was long the way that he started exploring his warging more.

He tried to keep from just going into Summer, to keep Meera from commenting about it. He would connect with birds too. Ravens were the easiest, but crows worked and so did owls. He had one traumatic experience where he had warged into a rabbit without telling the others. Meera shot the rabbit with her bow. Feeling the life draining from the creature’s body had been terrifying. When he came out of his warging state screaming, Meera and Jojen had helped to calm him down, but soon after berated him for what he’d done and put himself through.

Since the rabbit, he had stuck to Summer, birds, and Hodor (when absolutely necessary).

The shared visions with Jojen were more limited, but his dreams were more vivid when he did manage to sleep. They didn’t seem like visions, but they were strange and reoccuring. Sometimes he would have the same one sleep after sleep, then it would come back again after not being there for several nights. Sometimes they were of his sisters, sometimes Rickon and Osha, others were of Jon, then there were a few of Linly.

There were two with Linly and neither were happy, not that any of his dreams were happy these days. The first was the worst one. She was sitting in a small cage with the sounds of dogs barking around her. Her wrists tied to one of the bars and her face was bloodied and bruised. Her apron was smeared with mud and blood. He recognized the kennel cage. It was one at Winterfell. It was dark and he could hear the cracking of a whip somewhere in the distance.

The second wasn’t as bad, but it wasn’t pleasant. She was walking by a weirwood tree that he didn’t recognize. It was much smaller than the one at Winterfell. She was wearing a black dress he didn’t recognize either. It was much more fitted to her body, which he’d never taken notice of before. Her hair was littered with leaves and winter flowers. It was braided, which he had never seen her do before. Usually her hair just hung wildly around her head because she had refused to wear the habit that Old Nan got for her. She looked pretty. He’d never thought of her as pretty before. It would have been pleasant to see her this way, but she was standing under the weirwood tree and sobbing into her hands. Her hands were covered in small scars and burns.

As with his dreams of his sisters and brothers, if he tried to move closer to any of them, the three eyed raven was there to caw at him. If he got too close, it would swoop down in his face, flap its wings at him, caw loudly, and even claw at him with its talons. Whatever these dreams were, he was not meant to help the people he cared for. Not right now. He was supposed to see them because he needed to be reminded of what he was doing this for. He wasn’t strong enough to help them yet, but he knew he would be.

Bran didn’t talk much about his loved ones with the Reed siblings. It was painful to bring them up. 

The air was getting colder the further north they went. Bran had never been out of Winterfell and Winter Town before this. Being pushed around in the wheelbarrow by Hodor, he was able to look at things the way those who had to walk didn’t. Much of the time, he felt guilty about having to be pushed or carried around. He knew it wasn’t his fault, but it made him feel weak. There was some part of him that was hoping all his and Jojen’s visions would lead him to a way to fix his legs. Right now, he felt like luggage and was hoping they would make camp soon. He knew they had to go as far as possible every day, because it would take twice as long to get to the wall having to avoid all roads, but he just wanted out of this bucket.

He thought about warging into Summer, but his eyes caught something.

“Hodor, stop,” he said softly as he pushed himself up on his hands, “What’s that?” he squinted a little in the trees.

“What’s wrong?” Meera came up beside him and started looking in the same direction.

“It’s a hut,” he pointed off.

“Wait here,” Meera ordered to them all as she started towards the small building he saw. 

Meera was an incredible girl. She was several years older than himself. She was intelligent, she knew how to hunt, she took care of all of them, and she was pretty. If it wasn’t for her, after Osha left with Rickon, they wouldn’t survive. He sometimes felt a pang of guilt when he would think about her. Bran didn’t understand why. Why should he feel guilty looking at her sometimes? Especially when they started a fire and he watched it shine off her hair. Or when his heart would race as she wrapped an extra pelt around his shoulders as the nights got colder.

He watched as she came trotting back down through the trees, “It’s empty. The roof is caved in a little, but it’ll still be better than sleeping out here. I think we should camp for now. Good spotting it, Bran,” she smiled and he felt his face warm up, “Lets go.”

It was a small, one room hut. There was a fireplace, but there was no telling when it was last used and no point in trying to clean it for a one night stay. They wouldn’t need a fire anyway. The walls would keep out most of the wind and the snow that had started falling, even with the roof partially caved in. Their furs and body heat would be enough to keep them warm. There was a table with a broken leg laying cockeyed in the corner and a small shelf along the wall with broken clay jars along it. Meera had spotted an old pot in the fireplace and was already inspecting it to see if they could take it and use it along the way. Jojen settled down in one of the corners on a small pile of old straw.

“Bran, you should take the cot. I checked it, it’s still sturdy,” Meera ordered as Hodor carried him inside, the hut being too small for his wheelbarrow with all of them. 

The giant started to take him to the cot along one of the walls. Likely to settle him down before going to collect their furs and supplies from the wheelbarrow, “No. You should have it. You do the most for us, Meera. You need somewhere at least a little comfortable to sleep.”

“Don’t be noble about it, Bran. I can sleep anywhere. I don’t need comfort,” he knew there was no point in fighting her about it. She would win. All she had to do was tell Hodor to put him in the cot and nothing Bran said would matter. Hodor would listen to her first, just like he had with Osha. It was the commanding tones the two women had. Linly had been the same way with Hodor. 

Jojen was fast asleep soon after they settled into the hut. He was piled with most of the furs from the wheelbarrow, but the Reeds had their share of them. The other greenseer had had a seizure the day before and he was still recovering, so he was asleep the quickest. Hodor was the next after eating some dried meat and hard cheese. It took a lot to get him to sleep these days. He was usually the last to sleep.

Meera walked over and sat on the edge of the cot as he pushed himself to sit up with his arms. His arms were getting stronger everyday, “I have a little bread left,” she held up the hunk of stale bread, “Want some?”

Bran shook his head, “No. I ate plenty.”

She nodded lightly, “Too bad you ran out of that jam. It would make the bread better.”

The mention of his hackberry jam brought back that pang of guilt. He still had the jar, but it was empty now. They had finished it off several days ago. Using it to make things taste just a little better whenever they could. The sweetness and hint of tartness helped make their meals seem less dull. It was gone now though, “Thank you for coming all this way with us. We wouldn’t have made it this far without you,” he said softly.

Meera smile and picked at the bread a little, “Jojen believes this is important. That we’re meant to help you. He’s never been wrong before,” her eyes looked around the hut, “I think this was a woods witch’s hut.”

Bran had heard of woods witches before. Mother said there was one somewhere in the Wolfswood, but that was the extent of what he knew about them, “How can you tell?”

“We had one in the woods near home. They burned her after she tricked a girl into drinking moon tea to get rid of her baby. Said that she baby belonged to the mans he loved, but didn’t love her back. It ended up killing the girl too. She lived in a hut like this. They keep small homes, from what I hear,” she pointed up at the shelf of broken jars, “Those are herb jars. She probably died some time ago.”

It was at least a nice change to talk and think about something different for once, “Do you think woods witches have real magic?”

Meera shook her head, making her curls bounce a little and he felt his heart race, “Just women who practice bad medicine. They don’t care about the consequences of what they give to people. Moon tea kills more women than it helps. They take advantage of people in need.”

He nodded. That made sense, “Do you think real magic even exists?”

“I don’t know. Would be pretty hard to deny it seeing as I’m traveling with two greenseers and a warg. Maybe magic just exists differently than we thought it did. Stories talk about fairies and cauldrons with shimmering potions and spells that can turn people into toads. Maybe it’s not like that. I think if magic is real, it’s simpler than that. It requires a certain type of person to see it and use it. It requires them to use their whole body to work, not just some herbs in a pot with a magic spell. But who knows. Maybe I’m wrong or maybe warging and greenseeing aren’t magic and are something else entirely,” she shrugged a bit.

“I think it does,” he had to. Bran was still convinced that at the end of this journey, he would walk again. His father and Robb were both gone. That made him Lord of Winterfell now. He would get his legs back, rally the Stark allies, and take back his home. Sansa and Arya could come home then. They would be safe once they were home. Jon was already vowed to the Night’s Watch, but he would always still have a home at Winterfell. 

“You should get some sleep. We’re leaving early in the morning,” Meera pat his legs lightly, but he could only see it instead of feeling it.

He nodded, “I’ll try. Could you take one of the pelts to Jojen. He looks cold.”

She smiled and climbed to her feet and moved to pull one of the pelts from him. He thought about Linly. She could be safe too. He would take care of her as she had taken care of him. What did that really mean though? What sort of person would she be when he returned home? What sort of person would he be? It was a lot to think about and his mind switched back to Meera.

Meera who was kind, strong, and pretty. Meera who was here right now. Meera who was the only girl he had seen in months since Osha left. Meera who somehow found out that it was his name day several days ago and gave him extra berries with supper. Meera who was so close, right now.

She leaned over to pull the pelt off the side of the cot against the wall and he leaned up. Bran felt his lips brush against hers. He’d never kissed a girl before, but he had seen it done. It didn’t seem as if he would get to kiss one tonight either. Just as their lips started to touch, she pulled back fast, “Bran…”

Shame washed over him and he turned his head away, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sixteen, Bran, you’ve just turned thirteen.”

He wished she would just walk away and not talk about it, “I know. I just wanted to...know what it felt like.”

“And you’ll get to. Someday. With a girl you care for and who cares for you the same way.”

“I understand,” he said softly before laying himself down, “I’m going to rest now,” he didn’t want to talk about it anymore. 

“Good night, Bran,” she took the pelt and brought it over to her brother as he turned his head away and closed his eyes.


	13. Mearow

War was profitable for the right kinds of people. So few would come after her kind during times of war, because they all held old superstitions. It was one thing to drag a witch off and burn her during times of peace, but during war. Well. People always hoped a witch was on their side. Girls needed to get rid of love and rape babies. Men needed to get rid of the warts on their cocks from the girls they had stuck it in. Lords wanted magic on their side. Soldiers wanted a witch to save their injured limbs. There was no end to the uses of a witch during a war. It didn’t even matter if the magic worked or not. There were plenty of wartime only woods witches. Girls who dressed the part and sold flavored water as if it were potions. They made a good amount of coin before going back to their brothels. 

Mearow was not a wartime witch. She had come from across the Narrow Sea when she was a child with her mother who had been a witch too. They settled here in the Wolfswood after making their way here by foot. It had been a long journey and one that had left her scarred in many ways. She had watched her mother raped while she stayed hidden up a tree. Her mother had allowed it to happen just so that Mearow would be spared. They had both been marked with witch brands on their backs and nearly burned at the stake when she was seven. Eventually men did find her when she was sixteen and forced her into womanhood. She could have fought them off, but her mother had passed just days before and her mind and body couldn’t fight.

It was Lord Stark that had been kind to her. At least as kind as anyone could be to one of her kind. He had the men punished. While not every rape could be punished, Stark took particular offense to his men taking advantage of a girl in mourning. Stark held his men to a higher standard than most. What happened to them, she didn’t really care. She hadn’t even brought the case to Stark. Apparently the men were too stupid to not gloat and he overheard. He’d personally come to offer up his condolences over her loss and apologies for what had happened to her. Like all people, he tried to sooth it over with money.

Mearow declined and simply asked to be allowed to do her work in peace on his lands. He granted her request and she had lived deep in the Wolfswood ever since. He had requested she keep her magic out of Winterfell, but that wasn’t wholly up to her. What someone did with her wares once they left her hut wasn’t up to her. Stark had never come back to complain, or at all, which was fine by her.

Her mother and she had built the hut with their own hands. Mother had said it was larger than it should have been, but only because most didn’t have their daughters with them. There was two rooms. A small room with two cots and then a larger room for work. Since her mother’s death, the whole of both rooms was for work. She had no lovers or children of her own. There was a desire for a child, but the thought of bedding a man to get one sickened her. There were plenty of orphans in the villages, she was sure, but Mearow never left the Wolfswood. People came to her, not the other way around. They told her what they needed, she silently provided, and they left their payment. In truth, Mearow at one time feared pregnancy so much that she drank the Moon Tea on a daily basis until she bled so hard that her monthly cycles never came back after that. 

Mearow was no two bit wartime witch or even a woods witch of Westeros. No. She was a true witch. It ran in her blood. Every woman in their family was blessed with the gift. They had left the East when her grandmother passed. Mother had said it was time to show the seven kingdoms true magic. Her mother had been ambitious. It hadn’t gone the way she had been hoping, but Mearow got the life she had wanted.

It was a quiet life. She never wanted for anything, not really. She went months without seeing or speaking to another soul. Money could never buy her, because Mearow never asked for money. Her payments ranged between simpler things and unconventional things. Most often, people would leave her cloth for making clothes or herb items she could not get in Wolfswood. Sometimes, for more extreme wares, she demanded a piece of them. Hair, skin, toe or finger nails, or even blood. Sometimes, after Moon Tea, she demanded the remains.

The years had not been kind to Mearow. Her joints ached to the point that not even her salves could ease them. Her hands shook. Her once raven black hair full of curls was now long, limp, and shot with white. She had never cut her hair before and it was stuck forever in a thick braid, dragging the ground as she walked. Her dark skin was full of wrinkles and age marks. Her eyes had to be squinted and strained to see sometimes. There was a time when those who visited her would remark about what an exotic beauty she was. Those days were long behind her. Nowadays, it took at least three times as long to get herself free of her cot and her joints loosened up enough to move right.

Most of her work these days was private. She didn’t get much business anymore. Not because her wares weren’t good or needed, but it was war time and whores were taking her work in the villages. It would give her a few good years of peace before people started coming back again. Not that she would be around to service them much longer. Winter was coming and she decided she was not going to survive it. She would die peacefully in the long winter’s cold snow when it came and caved in the roof of her hut.

Her head craned up as the caw of a raven caught her attention. She eyed the large bird sitting in her window. It cocked it’s head at her and cawed again. More than just winter was coming, it seemed. Perhaps she wouldn’t live to see winter after all.

Slowly, she pulled out her dagger and sliced her palm shallowly. She allowed her blood to drip into a wooden bowl before grabbing a cloth to wrap around the wound before bring the bowl to the window. The raven cawed again and dipped it’s beak into the puddle of dark red, “We’re both very old now, Friend. I hatched you myself,” her voice was shaky. 

This raven belonged to her as much as any animal could belong to someone. She hatched it when she was young and it had outlived the normal lifespan of a raven. It no longer flew, but rather hopped. Like herself, the years had been unkind to it. They were a couple of old birds and their time was nearly up, “What do you have for me?” the last time she saw it, she had told it not to come back until it was time to die. 

The raven cawed loudly again, at least it still had its voice strong as ever. Her own was starting to fail her. She watched as it hopped out of the sill and down to the ground. It pecked at a mound of straw that had not been there the day before. Mearow knew every inch of these woods, especially her own hut, well enough to know it had not been there before she went to sleep. It pecked until a nest was uncovered with a single raven egg nestled inside.

She knew the egg well. The powder blue coloring with dark speckles. Normally, a nest would have four to six eggs, but there was just the one, “And what is this? Stealing from other nests, now are you?” she smiled softly. Neither of them had ever had a child, “We’re both a little old to be having children now. These will be our last few months, the baby will never survive. Bring it inside if you want, but I’m not taking care of it.”

Mearow smiled before turning back to the inside of her hut. She walked over to the fireplace and stirred the contents of the pot hanging over it. Bringing the spoon up, she leaned over to sniff it when there was a knock on the door. She stared at the door for a moment. It had been at least a year since her last customer. The knock came again, but it was lower on the door this time. It nothing else, Mearow did like a good curiosity.

Slowly, she made her way to the door and opened it, allowing in the cold, morning wind. Her old eyes glanced down and she saw the girl huddled up against the door frame. Her pale face was red with wind rash, her eyes looked glassy, her lips were chapped and bleeding, there were remains of dark bruises under her wind rash, and her blond hair was mud matted and stuck with leaves and sticks. Her dress and apron were tattered, dirty, and falling apart. Her feet were bare, swollen, and muddy. Her fingers were clenched together in tight fists. Her whole body was shaking something fierce. It was a sorry sight.

Reaching down, her back protesting the bending motion, she grabbed the supply bag that was sitting on the ground next to her. Mearow had no sympathy for people. She walked back into the hut, leaving the door open for the girl to haul herself in if she so desired, and walked over to the table to empty out the bag to see if there was anything of use in it. She ignored the sound of the girl groaning in pain as she crawled past the threshold and collapse onto the floor.

The contents of the bag weren’t anything exceptional. A jar of jam, some hard cheese that was barely left, stale bread, an empty waterskin, and a small carved bird. The only thing that mattered to her was the last thing. A small, wooden box of sweet plums. The Stark’s direwolf was carved into the top, but along the sides was something else. She turned it slowly in her hands and a smile on her lips.

“That old hag,” she shook her head before emptying the sweet plums onto the table and tossing the box into the fireplace. Those words were for her eyes only. Not that there were many that would have been able to read it here. Even still, better safe than sorry, “This isn’t an orphanage.”

Sighing, she walked over to where the girl had sprawled out on the floor, “You get the cot until tomorrow morning, then you sleep in front of the fire like a dog. I’m not giving up my bed for you,” she reached down and grabbed a fist full of buttered toast blond hair and started to walk. The girl had two options. To lay there and let her hair be ripped out or to crawl along. She was smart enough to push through her pain and start crawling, “You can make your own mat if you can gather the stuff to do it.”

Mearow lead the girl into her sleeping room, not that it was much of a sleeping room. It was still full of work items with a cot shoved in the back of it all. The girl crawled on top of the cot and went limp against it, “You got a name, Girl?”

The girl’s lips cracked a little and bled some more, but she managed to speak, “Linly.”

“Very good. You got a raven egg out there to take care of, so don’t over sleep. Ravens are picky creatures, even still in the egg. They won’t take to just anyone. You have to care for them before they care for you. The love of a raven is fickle and hard to earn.”

The girl’s eyes slid shut and Mearow watched as her breathing steadied out, “So long as you survive the day and night, anyway.”


	14. Linly

Mearow was as much of a cunt as Old Nan had been, but in very different ways. She never gave orders, but she punished as if Linly had disobeyed. She’d get her knuckled cracked with a stick if she was cutting something wrong, she’d get a slap to the cheek if she got the wrong nuts, or any number of little things like that. Yet Mearow never told her the proper way to cut something or what nuts to get. At least Old Nan had only cared about her keeping clean, staying away from the Ironborns, and not using her fingers to eat when utensils were provided.

The witch also did things that disgusted even Linly. When she bathed in the small tub the witch had out back, she was told to bottle up some of the dirty water and it was added the pot over the fire. If she cleaned out under her nails or cut her nails in any way, the witch made her save that stuff too. The worst was the monthly bleeding. The witch kept that too. A whole cabinet had been cleared out and she was to put her items into it. Linly realized the identical cabinet next to Mearow’s cot contained the same thing, which she gagged about.

Mearow had no shame. She admitted that the large jars at the bottom of her cabinet were filled with the petrified remains of aborted babies and her own dead mother. She said that one day Linly would understand and learn the value of collecting such things. 

When she first woke up, she hardly remembered getting here. All she remembered about the last few days before she woke up here was cold wind, stomach pains from cramping, and just the drive to trudge forward. Old Nan had told her to just travel north west through the Wolfswood towards the Ice Bay. That there would be someone there who would take her in and help her. The old bat had got her out through some passageway through the Stark crypts and sent her on her way into the woods.

The last thing she had expected was to be sent to a witch. What she expected even less was for the witch to start treating her as if she were being trained to be a witch too. Linly didn’t believe much in the Old Gods or any gods at all, but she knew they still burned witches all over the place. Why would she want that? She tried to tell Mearow that she was just a whore’s daughter and a maid, but the woman wouldn’t hear of it. Just told her that if she wanted to leave, then to leave. Or she could stay and continue doing as she was sometimes told.

Her prospects were weak. At least here she was somewhat warm and there didn’t seem to be another person around for miles. It was kind of nice to be in the silence. Mearow didn’t talk much, so much of her day was spent in silence. When the witch did talk to her, it was mostly short comments. They had only had two or three conversations over the past year that went on more than ten minutes.

It took some time, but Linly was starting to come around to the idea of being a witch. It wasn’t anything like the stories she heard. Mearow wasn’t some pretty, young girl who tricked men into taking her shimmering potions only to be turned into a toad. It wasn’t just some spell and ‘poof’ things happened. It was a lot of work. Without guidance, it was a lot of guesswork. Luckily, Linly wasn’t completely illiterate and neither was Mearow. When the old witch would go to sleep, Linly was able to sit in front of the fire and read through what she called her grimoires. It was like a diary or a journal.

Mearow generally didn’t care what she did. Told her that if she killed herself, that was her own problem. So she was given reign to mix herbs and make salves as she wished. It was very different from work at Winterfell. This was work she wanted to do, not work she had to do. It was rare for Mearow to give her an actual order.

She sat at her little work table in front of the only window in the hut. She liked it here in the mornings, because the sun could warm her face. Linly winced as the knife slipped and nicked the tip of her finger. When she first started doing this, she would have stopped, cleaned up the blood, thrown out the tainted ingredients, and bandage up the wound before starting over. Now, she just kept going. It was a new knife, which now meant the knife now belonged to her. It had taken her blood and would behave for her in the future. That’s what Mearow said. She also said that it was okay if the knife and ingredients decided it needed her blood and took it, but never to intentionally give her blood.

Linly let the blood drip and mix with the leaves she was cutting. The finer she cut it, the more paste like it got as they mixed. It turned a dark green and she used the blade of the knife to scoop it up and dump it into a bowl that had tree sap and dirty bath water that was always cooking over the fire. She mixed it well until it thickened.

“What’s that for?” the old witch’s voice was still sleepy. Mearow always slept in well past sunrise and went to sleep well before sunset. She wasn’t an active person and had said before that she was nearing her death.

“There’s been a cat outside for a few days. It has a limp. I’m going to fix it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’ll die if I don’t. He can’t hunt properly and I’m not going to feed him everyday. I already have to take care of that one,” she eyed the nest sitting in the window sill with the baby raven in it. The little fluff ball had hatched not long ago. Mearow said that it had stayed in its egg a long time and only came out because she was ready to care for it.

“So don’t feed it and don’t mend it. Let it die. It’s weak.”

Linly smiled a little, “But then I have to bury it, otherwise it will attract other animals that will decide to stick around. If I mend it, it might go away.”

“Or it will stay.”

“And it can fend for itself.”

The witch pat her shoulder lightly before going to settle into her chair next to the fire, “Have you named it yet?”

She looked over her shoulder for a moment, “The cat?”

“Your raven.”

“Oh...no…”

“Why not?”

That was a good question. Animals that belonged to people always had names. Not even just animals. Buildings all had specific names, every tree had to have a name, even swords had names. Everyone named everything. It seemed reasonable that she name the raven she had been given. Yet she hadn’t, “Why does it need a name? It knows what it is and it knows who I am. I see no reason to name it. For all we know, it has it’s own name in it’s own language that we can’t understand. No reason for me to confuse it or make it adjust to me. It’s a raven and a raven is what I’ll call it.”

“Very good. You’re smarter than you look, Girl. Have any dreams lately?”

“You’re talking a lot today,” Linly commented as she let the bowl sit in the sun to stew a bit. She reached over into the nest and stroked her uncut fingers down the back of the baby bird. It felt so fragile and soft.

“A dying woman likes to talk more and hear stories.”

“I didn’t dream last night.”

“You’re still not very good a lying. You dreamed about the boy again, didn’t you?”

She felt her cheeks warm up. She had made the mistake of telling Mearow that she had an intimate dream of Bran. It was only once. It was very strange. He didn’t look like she remembered. He looked older, but it just seemed odd to imagine him older since she had never seen him that way, “No. I didn’t,” it was just the one dream. It was barely an intimate dream anyway. They were sitting together on a cot in a dusty old hut. She leaned over to move the fur pelt over his lap and he leaned up to kiss her. She woke before their lips even touched.

“Then what?”

Linly didn’t want to say it. It made her stomach turn and her eyes water. She had woken with a start from it in tears. She must have woken Mearow a bit with her crying. That could be the only reason why she was questioning it, “...I dreamed Nan was being tortured and killed because she let me go. She was in so much pain. They stripped the skin from her fingers and she begged them to kill her, instead they just cut her fingers off.”

“Dark dreams are dark omens.”

“...it can’t be real. The Greyjoys don’t torture. It’s not fun for them. They just want a brutal death.”

“Perhaps it was just a dream of guilt then. Off then. Go mend the cat.”

Linly shiverd a little to shake off the feeling of remembering the nightmare before she picked up the bowl and started outside.


	15. Meera

It was difficult not to feel a little resentful of Bran sometimes. Deep down, she knew it wasn’t his fault Jojen had died. There was a part of her that had begun accepting that Jojen had known he was going to die coming here. That he had accepted that as his fate and was ready to greet it because he needed to help Bran. That didn’t make it easier though. She hadn’t even been able to bury his body because they couldn’t go that far out of the cave under the tree. She had to spend the first few days watching it slowly disappear under the falling snow until the snow created a burial mound for him. She prayed and prayed that he would not rise from the dead. Meera wasn’t sure she could handle that. Leaf said that they would take care of him, but she wasn’t sure what that meant. 

Then one day the mound was gone. When she asked Leaf where Jojen’s body was, all they told her was that he was properly at rest. She took small comfort in that, because the lack of a mound meant she had nothing to sit and mourn over anymore.

She remembered the first time Jojen had a seizure. The Maester had been at a loss of what to do for him. There seemed to be nothing that had triggered it and when he didn’t wake right away, they thought he was lost to them. She sat next to his bed for days, praying to the Gods to bring her brother back. She promised that if they would just bring him back, she would always take care of him. That she knew he was meant for more and that she would do everything she could to ensure that he reached that, if only they woke him up.

The Jojen that woke was not the Jojen she had remembered. He wasn’t sullen or somber, but there was an eerie calm about him. Like there was something he knew, that no one else did, and he accepted whatever it was.

She had been reluctant to leave home when he said that they had to find Bran. He said that it was his job to help Bran get to the true north. As reluctant as she had been, she remembered her oath to the Gods. That she would do anything and everything she could to help him reach his goals because she knew he was meant to do something important for the world.

Meera hadn’t prepared for that important thing to be his life. She knew now what it was that had made him so calm. Jojen had seen his death in that seizure and he had prepared for it.

It had been a year since then, or at least that’s what Leaf told her. It was hard to tell time here without real seasons. She missed her family and she was sick of eating the weird paste the Children of the Forest made from the weirwood sap. Even more, she missed her family. Her father and mother deserved to know what had happened to them. They had ran off in the night and she was sure her mother had been worried sick. What would they say if she returned home with Jojen? Meera should have tried harder to convince him to stay home. Worse yet, what if she returned home to no one? What if they were all gone and she was alone in the world now?

She had thought about leaving. Bran was here now and what else was there for her to do? But Leaf insisted that he still needed her. It didn’t seem to matter that there were things she needed too. Bran wasn’t her family and he was the reason her brother was dead. Meera tried hard to push that resentment away. Bran hadn’t known what was going to happen by coming here. He and Jojen were just young boys who were following their dreams.

Finding the vast expanse of white snow out in front of her to be a sickening sight, Meera stood and walked back into the cave. Back to what her life was now. Sitting there, doing nothing. Just watching Hodor do nothing, watching Bran doing nothing, watching that old man do nothing...it was just a whole lot of nothing. Leaf showed her around the vast expanse of the tunnels under the tree, but that grew boring once she realized there was nothing here. She imagined that there was a time when that was different, but not anymore. 

She settled down into the section of roots she had claimed as her spot and looked towards the center mass of roots. Buried within them was the Three Eyed Raven. He was an elderly man who didn’t speak often. There was something about him that she didn’t like. It wasn’t as if she thought he was a bad person or anything, but he seemed detached. Like he wasn’t human. Though if she had to guess, he stopped being human a long time ago. He was a tree now. 

Below the mass of roots, Bran sat nestled into an opening between the roots. Meera tried to curve her resentment by reminding herself that Bran was in no better a situation. He was suffering just as much. Many in his family had been murdered, he had no idea if his younger brother and Osha were still alive, there was no telling what state Winterfell was in, and he couldn’t even go outside the cave without Hodor carrying him. He spent most of his time laying on the floor and in a daze.

This wasn’t the way he had been expecting it to go anymore than she had. She remembered the pain in his voice when he realized the Three Eyed Raven couldn’t give him his legs back. He would be a cripple forever.

Right now, he was sitting there with a knife in his hands. It looked like one Leaf had given him. He would stare at it for a few minutes before bringing it up to his hair and cutting a bit of the length off. He had been slowly trimming off his hair for the last few days. It wasn’t going well. He would reach up to touch the spots he had cut, trying to see if the lengths were the same. It was frustrating him.

He had changed a bit since they got here. He had lost hope for his legs and was trying to find near hope in his sessions with the Three Eyed Raven. It was a slow process though and he was getting as frustrated with it as she was. Physically, his face was a little thinner, his skin had cleared up, and his features were a little sharper. He was developing into more of a man, yet he’d never be one. Not really.

Slowly, she pushed up from the floor and started over to him. They had kept their distance as much as was possible since the night in the witch’s hut. Bran wasn’t the first boy to try to kiss her. She had kissed a boy when she was his age, so it wasn’t as if it would have been her first kiss. The man in that little village who had almost violated her would have been the first man she had ever been with and she was grateful to have escaped that mostly unharmed. Bran had tried his best to defend her. Had tried to call out for Summer and his half brother when the man who rescued her had turned on them. He had screamed for them not to touch her and she could see it in his face that he would have fought them if he could. She’d never thanked him for that. Meera couldn’t imagine what it must be like to be that helpless.

“Let me help,” she said softly and he looked up at her in surprise, “You’re going to cut yourself if you keep doing it like that.”

He looked at her for a moment before reluctantly handing the knife over. She helped to shift him so she could sit behind him and cut it for him. She worked at the strands slowly. His hair had grown long and it made him look younger than he was. He’d look much older once it was shortened. They were both quiet as she let the hair drop around his shoulders, “Let me know if I pull too hard.”

His head bobbed a little as she would pull, cut, and release. Hodor was sleeping across the room somewhere, Leaf was in the tunnels, and Summer was out hunting somewhere. It was just quiet. That’s how it was a lot around here, “I’m sorry,” he finally broke the silence.

“For what?”

“For trying to kiss you...I’m just sorry.”

She smiled a little. Meera could have let him kiss her. She imagined it would have been his first, but she knew it was wrong. Not just because of their age, but because she knew what he was feeling, “Don’t be sorry about trying to kiss me, Bran. You’re a young man and I’m the only girl you’ve seen for over a year. You don’t really like me that way, you just don’t have anyone else to have those feelings for. I’m just the one that happens to be here. You’ll get home and you’ll see the girl you really like and you’ll be happy you didn’t get to kiss me. Because all you’ll be able to think about is kissing her,” she had heard him say the name Linly several times in passing and in his sleep. Meera didn’t know who she was, but she had to be important to him, “Tell me about her.”

“...I asked her if she would be my wife before my fall…” puppy love. Meera had experienced it when she was younger, “She said I wanted a pretty wife and she was too ugly,” she smirked a little, “She swore worse than some of father’s men sometimes. Always calling people cunts. I helped teach her how to read and she learned how to make jam for me,” which explained why he refused to get rid of that empty jar.

“I’m sure she’ll be happy to see you again.”

Bran was silent for a moment as she started to finish up trimming his hair down, “I don’t think she’ll be the same.”

“Maybe not, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be happy to see you. You won’t be the same either, Bran. You’ve survived beyond the wall, you tried to fight men for me, you’ve learned how to warg, your greensight is getting better all the time; you’ll be as different as she will. That won’t matter though. You’ll see each other again, you’ll be happy, you’ll talk, and then you’ll kiss.”

“And what if I don’t feel anything or what if she doesn’t and I do? Or she does and I don’t?”

“That’s when you get to talk more,” she smiled and ran her fingers through his hair to get the loose bits out, “There. All done. That’s much better.”

Meera moved out from behind him and helped him to sit back up against the roots. He reached up and touched the shortened hair. She was right, it made him look older, “Thank you.”

She smiled softly and reached out to pat his cheek, “Get some rest before he wakes up," she choked back the swell of anger and resentment once again.


	16. Linly

The dreams were getting worse and better at the same time. She blamed Mearow for it. The old woman told her that dreams were important and gave her a bitter drink every night that made her dreams more immersive and vibrant. It made her feel confused when she would wake in the morning because she wasn’t sure if she was still dreaming or not. She constantly felt lost somewhere between the waking world and the dreaming world. Sometimes she would sit and stare out the window and wonder if she really was awake. 

It made her feel paranoid at times. To the point that Mearow had started reducing the amount of the bitter drink she took. The old witch said that Linly was more connected with the dream world than she had anticipated. It didn’t help though. The intensity was still there and Linly felt lost much of the time. During moments of clarity, she could function quite well. She continued to read Mearow’s books, took care of her raven as it learned to fly, and even started experimenting with potions of her own based on Mearow’s work. 

Linly spent a lot of time outside. She’d walk barefoot through the trees and collect items she needed. It was getting colder outside every day. The heavy snows would start soon, she was sure of it. They had their usual summer and spring snow falls, but those always melted quick and left mud. But the air was different now. The snow didn’t melt as fast and the air was always crisp feeling. The winds blew colder and night came sooner than it should have. Mearow kept saying that as winter got closer, so did her death. The talk of her death was part of what drove Linly outside so much. She didn’t want to listen to it.

Pine needles plucking her feet, she trodded through the wet forest floor until she reached the weirwood tree. It was at least half a day walk from Mearow’s hut, but it was worth it to go there. There hadn’t been a weirwood tree where she grew up in Winter Town. Linly had first seen one in the godswood at Winterfell. The massive tree with it’s bleeding sap and face had been off putting at first. She had seen nothing to like about it. 

This one was different though. It was smaller and there was no face on it. Old Nan had said that not all weirwood had faces. Only the ones in the North did have them, but none that used to exist in the South had. That meant someone had carved them and Old Nan had said it was the Children of the Forest. Just a story though. Most likely just someone had been traveling and carved them to make a story for other people.

Standing under the red leafed tree, Linly felt a shiver down her spine. Quickly, she whipped around, sending her braided hair flying over one of her shoulders as she turned. Mearow had started making her braid it to keep from it falling into things or catching fire when she worked around flames. Her raven would pluck at the strands sometimes or even try to nest in it. Linly was always shooing it away, but it would stick leaves and flowers in her hair in an attempt to build a nest. The hem of her black dress dragged in the mud as she lowered a bit and crept under the lower branches. Her eyes were wide and looking everywhere.

It was midday already, but the sun was not poking through the heavy clouds. For a moment, she forgot why she had come out here and was just looking around frantically, backing up against the trunk of the weirwood tree. The wind made the leaves and tree branches to move, making the shadows move. Linly could feel her mind slipping and she covered her face to weep.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. Mearow had given her the bitter drink for six months now. She felt like she was losing her mind. It was too much. She didn’t want to do this anymore. Being a witch had never been in her plans. All she had wanted when she left Winter Town was a place to sleep. How did sleeping in the Winterfell stables land her where she was now? Crying under a tree, terrified of the shadows that moved like deamons, dreaming nightly of Old Nan screaming and crying, and not knowing when something was real or not.

“Linly?”

The sound of her name made her head shot up, her eyes wide as she frantically looked around, her fingers going to the dagger she kept at her waist as her eyes fell on the young man standing not far from her, “Who are you?!” she snapped wildly as she brought up the dagger, “Stay away from me,” her voice hissed.

“You can see me?” he asked back.

“Of course I can see you, you cunt. Get out of here. Don’t make me hurt you,” she threatened, “I’m witch of these woods,” not yet she wasn’t, but he didn’t need to know that, “I’ll turn you into a toad,” though nothing Mearow had read or said proved that witches could actually do something like that.

He stepped closer, ducking under a branch to join her in the shade of the weirwood. He had a smile on his face, but she backed up harder against the trunk, “You don’t recognize me,” her brows furrowed as he looked down at himself. He was close to her height with short dark brown hair and deep set eyes under thick brows, “You look almost the same, but you had already started maturing when we’d met. It has been almost five years. I guess I do look different now.”

Linly stared at him. She couldn’t will herself to attack him or make a run for it. She just stared. Taking in all of his features. They were familiar, but not from the past as he was talking about it. It felt recent. Her dreams came to mind. Not the ones of Old Nan. Ones about Bran. Just the one dream she had. Him sitting on the cot and their lips almost touching. His hair was longer in the dream, but the features were the same, “B-Bran?”

He smiled softly and took another step towards her, “No. No. No. This isn’t real. It’s not real,” she started saying frantically as the dagger fell out of her hands. The smile faded from his lips, “Stop it. You’re not real. Bran’s dead. Theon killed him,” it didn’t even occur to her to think about the fact that this man was walking, “I saw his body. Hanging from Winterfell. Burned and broken. You’re not real. This is a dream.”

She had been sure she was awake. The raven had pecked her hand this morning before she came out as a reminder to bring it back something. The peck had hurt. That meant this was real. At least she had thought it did, “Linly…”

“Stay away from me!” she couldn’t take it anymore. She fell to her knees sobbing, her hands over her ears and her fingertips digging into her hair, “Stop it! Just stop it!”

Linly flinched hard as she felt arms wrap around her. He pulled her close and her head buried against his chest. He didn’t smell right. He didn’t smell like anything, “I’m not dead, Linly. I’m here. With you.”

“...no…” she said weakly, but she didn’t try to pull away, “...it’s not real…you’re not real…”

“Look at me,” she felt his hand under her chin and resisted as he tried to make her look up at him, “Linly, please, look at me,” reluctantly, she tilted her head up, “What have you done to yourself out here?”

“I don’t know what’s real,” her voice was a whisper. She wanted to believe he was real. That he was sitting under the weirwood tree with her and holding her. She wanted Bran Stark to be here holding her and able to walk, “You’re...you’re walking...that means it’s not real. You’re dead.”

“I am real, Linly. I’m not dead.”

Linly wanted to believe him, but her mind couldn’t make a decision. It was painful, “I can’t...I can’t believe you...I want to believe you…”

“I can’t make you, but I’ll hold. I’ll sit here and hold you. When I get back to Winterfell, I’ll take care of you, like you took care of me. I promise.”

She didn’t know what to say anymore. There was nothing he could say or she could tell herself that would convince her whether this was real or not. So she just went silent. Letting herself feel him holding her. Even if this wasn’t real, she would still remember how she told herself it felt. She couldn’t smell him or even hear his breathing, but she could feel him. Linly curled up against him and they sat in the mud and melting snow under the weirwood.

Slowly, she closed her eyes. It felt like just a moment, but she opened them fast and sat up. She looked around frantically, “Bran? Bran?” but he wasn’t there. She climbed to her feet, her dress covered in mud and stuck with leaves from where she had been lying on the ground. Linly felt panicked. Her heart was racing and her head felt fuzzy, “Bran!” it had felt real. She had wanted it to be real. Her eyes searched the ground, but all she saw was her own footprints.

Her mind told her that it was real, but if that were true, then this was a lie. Was Bran still holding her and she was sleeping peacefully in his arms? 

“Ah!” she gasped loudly as she lifted her foot quickly and saw blood mixing with the mud on her feet. Sitting on the ground was her knife. The cut was deep, but nothing she hadn’t dealt with on her hands while cutting herbs or skinning animals. This was real. It had to be real. Mearow told her that dreams didn’t hurt. Which meant seeing Bran had been the dream. It had felt so real and it made her chest hurt to think that it wasn’t. Still, she remembered the raven pecking her this morning. That had hurt and that meant it was real, right? Maybe she had fallen asleep while she was crying and was just now waking up? 

It was too much.

Linly couldn’t take it. She covered her face again and screamed this time. 

_“Please kill me…”_

The voice made her head snap up and she ignored the pain in her foot as she darted around the weirwood and grabbed it’s trunk as it if were a safety anchor, “Who is it?! Where are you?! Leave me alone! Just leave me alone!”

_“Please kill me…”_

It was Old Nan’s voice. She knew it from her dreams. This was a dream. Which meant Bran was sitting there holding her, “Stop it! Stop it!”

Squeezing her eyes shut tight, she kept them closed until the begging for death stopped. It felt like just a moment, but she opened them fast and sat up. She looked around frantically, “Bran? Bran?” but he wasn’t there. She climbed to her feet, her dress covered in mud and stuck with leaves from where she had been lying on the ground. Linly felt panicked. Her heart was racing and her head felt fuzzy, “No...no...no...stop it…” she wept as she realized she had already done this. It wasn’t right. She’d been standing and hugging the tree, why was she already on the ground again?

“Ah!” she gasped, but not because she stepped on her knife, but because the mud was sinking into the deep cut on her foot. Blood dripped out into the mud and melting snow, but her knife was still on the ground several feet away, “I can’t...I don’t...please...just stop…” she grabbed her head, digging her fingers deep into her hair and her nails digging into her scalp.

Ignoring the pain, leaving her dagger, and forgetting the things she had been gathering for the day; Linly ran. She tripped over rocks and roots, but it didn’t stop her. By the time she made it back to the hut, her ankles were twisted and bruised. There were lashes from low branches all along her legs and arms. Her dress was torn and muddy. Blood puddled into globs under her foot as she stood in the doorway. Her hair was a twisted mess.

“What’re you doing, Girl?” Mearow snapped from her chair by the fireplace, “What happened to you? Go wash yourself before you touch anything,” the old witch could handle a bit of dirtiness. This place was hardly a clean place. There were body parts, fluids, blood, and animal parts everywhere. But Mearow still seemed to like them to be clean to a degree.

“I have to go back to Winterfell,” she barely recognized her own voice. It sounded hollow and ghostly. Like it was being echoed back to her from a distance.

“You’ll die.”

Linly looked around, her eyes falling on the raven that had claimed her. It looked at her and she laughed a little. It had a third eye in the middle of its forehead. It was only there for a split second before it was just feathers again, “Then I die.”

The old witch shook her head, “I always tell you, you get yourself killed that’s your issue.”

“This isn’t real, so it doesn’t really matter anyway.”


	17. Bran

“Why did you stop me?!” he yelled at the old man tangled in the roots. Meera was gone somewhere with Leaf. Hodor and Summer were across the cave from him, but they both perked up as he came out of his trance and started yelling.

“I’ve told you before…”

“Stay where I don’t belong and I’ll drown! I know! But I belonged there! She needed me! She needs help!”

“I know it’s difficult to not want to interfere, but you can’t.”

“Why not, if I can help?” he was angry. He wanted to get up from the dirt and run out of here. Run back to Winterfell to find Linly and help her. It was painful every time he came out of his visions. To come back and realize he was still a cripple. The Three Eyed Raven told him that he would learn to fly, but he still didn’t understand. Bran wanted to walk. To go back home and reclaim his home. To be able to do something. He felt useless and weak sitting in this cave day after day.

The visions were getting easier to manage and so was warging. He had seen so many things. Seen so much of his family and the people he cared for. Learned things he sometimes wished he didn’t have to. But seeing Linly the way she was, knowing that it was happening now and not something in the past, it pained him. The Three Eyed Raven had told him to start focusing his visions by concentrating on specific feelings. That focusing on a feeling would help him be able to pull up events in the past and present that related to that, rather than relating to a memory. It opened a large range of things for him to explore when he pushed it to be something more vague.

It still brought up things about him though.

He was tired of seeing sad things. Tired of focusing on the dark, cold history of his people. All he had wanted was something nice. That’s how he had first seen Hodor and his father when he was younger. To see the two of them in a way he’d never seen them before. To learn the gentle giant’s real name and that he had once been able to speak. To see his father as a young man, smiling, and training in Winterfell. It had been nice and that was all he had wanted a little bit more of.

He saw Meera and Jojen before they left their home. The two of them smiling and running the halls of their family home. Meera outshooting many of her father’s men. Jojen in his fragile condition cheering her on and encouraging her. Her mother shouting for Meera to get back to her sewing lessons and their father telling the woman to let the girl be.

He saw Osha with her husband, Bruni, when they lived over the wall. It was strange to see Osha that way. He had seen her smile, but not like that. Her eyes were softer and she wasn’t as tense. Snow falling into her dark hair as their village leader wrapped the rope around their wrists loosely. Binding them together in love.

Then he saw Linly and himself the first day they ran around the edge walls of Winterfell. He hadn’t recognized her that day, because it was the first time he had seen her cleaned of all the dirt and wearing proper clothes. She had called him a spoiled cunt before throwing a walnut at his head when he told her that she should be inside with the other maids. He’d said he wouldn’t tell anyone where she was if she could beat him in a race around the wall. Watching himself race her, he saw it for what it really was. They were nearly around the wall and he was just a few steps ahead of her. He would have won, but he didn’t. Bran watched his younger self slow down. He forced himself to slow so she would get ahead. He let her win, because if she won, he wouldn’t have to keep his promise to go tell people. She could stay out there with him.

After that, it was a string of memories just based on her. The old man noticed quickly and warned him against it. That he couldn’t focus on one person for too long. It was hard not to though. Before going into his visions today, he had the question in the back of his head of what she was doing now.

It was just like his dreams of her. The one where the raven always cawed and pecked at him to stay away. Her crying under the weirwood tree. But there was no raven to stop him this time. He had only saw things in the present a few times and nothing major. Nothing like this. He already knew that he could vaguely interact with the past, but he was warned greatly of the consequences of that. But this wasn’t the past. He wasn’t even sure she would see or hear him. He had called out to Jon once during one of these and the man hadn’t heard him. 

Her response was not what he had expected. She looked frantic and scared. Not at him, but at everything around her. Something was wrong and Bran couldn’t figure out what. She was in a panic. He tried to soothe her, but it didn’t help. It pained him to see her fall to the ground weeping. He told her that he would hold her and that he would take care of her one day. Bran meant it. 

Linly had helped care for him after his fall and during his sleep. He had heard that she took over much of his care after his mother left. Feeding him the fluids that had kept his body alive. Bathing him to keep away infection. Even helping to change his bandages. He owed it to her to help her when she was obviously in such need. She needed him now and he wasn’t there. Bran hadn’t recognized the weirwood tree they had been under. He didn’t even know where she was. Had Theon and his men drove her insane? Had they hurt her?

“You can’t help her.”

“Then what’s the point?! I just lay here day after day, doing what? Doing nothing! Just watching history I don’t care about and seeing the people I care about getting hurt!” he pulled himself upright against the mass of roots, staring up at the man hidden inside.

“That girl is on her own path and you cannot interfere with it, Bran. Just as you are on your path and no one can interfere with it.”

Bran hated this. It had been interesting at first to see the things he did and experience them in such a strange way. That had lost its appeal. He was starting to question what all of this was even for. He wondered if he was going to end up tangled in the mass of root one day. Going silent and letting the weirwood tree grow through him. Becoming a part of history himself. Linly had said she knew he was dead and that Theon had killed him. To the world outside of this place, Brandon Stark was dead. What was the point of all of this? He was dead to the world and going to be made to sit here and fade into history while learning the history of the world. It didn’t make sense.

“I’m not going to be like you. I’m not going to sit here and let this tree feed off of me. I won’t stay here forever.”

“Then learn to fly.”

He was tired of hearing that. Learn to fly. That’s what he was told over and over again, but he didn’t understand how to do it. He had given up hope that he would ever walk again and even accepted it, but there had to be a purpose for him in the world. There had to be a reason Jojen died. A reason Osha and his brother were gone. That Meera and Hodor were trapped here with him. If he brought them all this way for nothing, then all of that was on his hands. This had to mean something.

Slumping back down to the dirt, Bran thought over his interactions with Linly. She had looked scared and she was frantic. It was more than that. She wasn’t scared to see him, she had been scared before that. She had been crying before he spoke to her. It wasn’t seeing him that had set her off, she was already in a panic of some sort. She had threatened him.

“Are witches real? She said she was witch of the woods,” if he couldn’t leave to help her and he was going to continue being stuck here, perhaps he could at least learn something that could help her in the future. Old Nan had told him stories of witches and father said there was some old crone that lived in the Wolfswood near the Ice Bay that claimed to be a witch, but father didn’t believe it. Mother said witches were just women who preyed on others when they were desperate and killed more people than they helped. Bran might have gone on believing that, but it was hard to when he spent his days with the Three Eyed Raven and the Children of the Forest. Maybe witches were real, “You said she was on her own path. Is she a witch?”

“Yes.”

“I need to stop her then.”

“Why?”

“Because...because witches are monsters. They kill women, they eat children, they kill babies…”

“They have red eyes and yellow fanged teeth and fly through the night sky? Sometimes people make up stories about themselves to protect themselves. For every witch that is burned or beheaded for what they are, there is another who will live a long life because people are too scared to go near her. True witches are rarely ever caught unless they do something they shouldn’t.”

“Like what?” he couldn’t believe that Linly would try to become a witch. How would she even get that idea into her head? She wasn’t at Winterfell, that much he could tell. That weirwood tree was not one he knew and it didn’t have a face. It wasn’t part of a Godswood. He wondered how long she had stayed at Winterfell after he left. Where could she have gone to find herself becoming a witch? There had been slush snow on the ground, so she was still in the north, but not nearly as far nothing as he had gone. Maybe father had been right in saying there was a witch new the Ice Bay. A witch taking Linly in seemed more unlikely than his mother having let her stay at Winterfell to be a maid.

“Going and staying where they don’t belong.”

Bran felt his face heat up. It was not only an answer, but a jab at his own actions, “I just want to help the people I care about. I want to know they are safe…” but they weren’t. He had seen enough to know that things weren’t good. While he stayed safe trapped up here in this tree, his friends and family were being tortured and dying.

“Love is a good thing, but you need to learn to live beyond it, Bran. Until you do, you won’t learn to fly.”

He felt his face warm again, “I don’t love her,” despite her crying and panic, she had been beautiful. He had been right in saying that she almost looked the same. Even though he recognized her on sight, she had changed. She had always been taller than him, but he was almost her height now, which meant she hadn’t grown much. Her hair was longer and thicker, the color was a little darker. She was thinner, likely for the same reasons he was due to less food, and she was more womanly now. She reminded him of Meera a little in the way her body curved and he had liked how it felt to hold her.

“There is nothing wrong with having felt love, so long as you know that it is in the past. You don’t love her, but you did love her. That’s all it can be. You cling so hard to your ghosts. You won’t be able to fly until you learn to let them go.”

“You told me to think of things to focus on. How can I not think of the people I care about?”

“I told you to focus on feelings. Separate the feelings from the people who cause them. View them as pure entities of their own, untied to a mortal being.”

Something about that didn’t sound right in his mind, “But then won’t I forget the people I care about?”

“You’ll never forget anything, Bran. You’ll learn to fly when you’re not tied to ghosts.”

His eyes flicked up and he saw Meera and Leaf standing across the cave from him. They were both standing silently, letting the discussion play out, not wanting to disturb it. Leaf had a wooden bowl in her hands, “It will hurt to let them go…” he said softly.

Leaf crossed the room slowly, she knelt down next to him and he locked eyes with her. The Children of the Leaf were a special sort of beings. They were small, like children, but they didn’t look childlike, at least not to Bran. Leaf seemed very old when he looked in her mossy green eyes. She was beautiful in her own way. It was eerie and strange to watch her, but enchanting, “Then you’ll be in this cave forever and become part of the weirwood,” she said as she held the bowl out to him.

“What is this?” he looked down at the red paste in the bowl.

“It is made from weirwood sap and seeds. It will help you in your greensight.”

He shifted his eyes up to the man in the roots, “You couldn’t let go of your ghosts?”

“No. I couldn’t. I’ll never really fly, but you still can. It is better to fly and live without _want_ than it is to be trapped forever with only memories of the past to torment you.”

His eyes moved to Meera. She looked concerned. She didn’t understand. She had nothing to do here other than mourn her brother’s death day after day. If he didn’t do everything he could to make this work, then Jojen died for nothing. Linly had stayed behind to give the time to get away, her pain would be for nothing. Osha and Rickon were out there somewhere, for nothing if he didn’t make this work. 

Taking the bowl, he dipped his fingers into the thick paste and brought it to his mouth. It smelled bitter and it tasted worse.

It was time for him to sacrifice something.


	18. Ramsay

He watched quietly as she slipped over the edge of the wall and slipped down to disappear into one of the walking paths. His guards were going to be sorry when he got a hold of them in the morning. Letting a girl get past them like that. He smiled lightly as he walked quietly in the shadows. He saw her pop up every now and then until she disappeared into the main of Winterfell’s walls. The fact that she had managed to scale one of the back walls without anyone noticing said a lot about her. She was a tricky one and that excited him.

He had claimed Winterfell for his father several months ago. Word of who was here and now ruling the North was everywhere. The fact that she would still sneak in here despite that meant she was either very brave or very stupid, not that he saw much of a difference between the two.

Walking inside, Ramsay caught sight of her dashing down a hall and taking a sharp turn just before his guards came walking down the hall towards him. She was quick and barefooted from what he had seen. Her long blonde hair was nearly to her waist in a messy braid. 

He turned to enter the room she had gone into. It was the library tower. Ramsay had considered burning it, but his father insisted on keeping it. Said that the Stark’s library was impressive and too good to waste. He saw no real use for it. Ramsay walked to a shelf and pulled a book free, opening it in one hand and slowly turning the pages with the other as he listened. He didn’t hear anything. This tower only had one entrance. She would have to show herself eventually.

Yet he found himself turning the last page after nearly ten minutes and still nothing. No so much as a sigh or a panicked intake of breath. Ramsay knew how to hunt animals and people alike. He could tell she wasn't here anymore, but he couldn’t figure out how she had got out. There were stories that Winterfell held all kinds of secret passages. He and his men had found several of them in their initial sweeps. It was possible that this tower had at least one too. He’d largely ignored it and brushed it off because it wasn’t to his liking, but if there was a secret passage in here, where would it go?

It had been some time since he had a new girl to play with. They had moved to Winterfell just a few months ago and while Myranda kept him occupied for the most, he still needed more. Perhaps this tricky blonde could be his new play thing. It would be fun to see how Reek could play with her too. He had pushed his pet into doing a number of things, but interacting with a girl would be a new playground for them both. Myranda would enjoy the hunt too if this girl was as sly as she seemed.

Setting the book down, he walked along the shelves, crouching down a bit to look at the bases, “There you are,” he smiled as he saw a line of dust where the shelf had been moved a little. Creeping along it, he came to the wall and ran his fingers along it. He stopped as he felt air in one spot, but not another. He followed the drift of night air down to the floor. Just behind the side of the shelf, there was a small hole in the wall. Not large enough to fit himself into, but a young woman might manage.

Leaving the tower, he looked in the direction of the wall the hole was in. It lead to the broken tower. When they had first got here, there had been nothing but dirt, dead rats, and rocks in there. Ramsay saw use in it though. It wasn’t safe enough to house anyone important in it, but prisoners he didn’t care about falling through the floor to their deaths would be just fine. Right now there was only one there. That old hag.

She had claimed to be the Winterfell storyteller. That she had been in Winterfell long before any of them were even born. Ramsay could have let her go. Kicked her out to Winter Town, but torturing an old, respected, and loved servant of the Stark’s was too much to pass up. The old hag was still alive up there. He heard her crying sometimes, but it had been a few weeks since he had dragged her out. There was an entrance to the tower, but it was not easy to use. The old stairs were cracked and broken, constantly slick with moss, and missing in some places.

Ramsay climbed his way up them. Going slow, so as not to fall or make a sound. As he neared the top, he could hear the old hag’s whimpers, but he heard something else too.

“It’s alright, Nan. It’s me, Linly,” he didn’t recognize the name, but if she knew the old lady, then she was likely a Stark servant too. She would have had to of left either before or during the reign of the Ironbloods.

“Please...please kill me…” the pain in the old woman’s voice brought a smile to his face as he looked through the opened door from the shadow of the stairwell. He looked around and saw one of the openings in the floor that led to an opening in the wall. He was sure it would follow down to the library tower. 

“Shhhh...I’m going to get you out of here. I’ll take you to Mearow. I’ll take care of you.”

It was sweet and disgusting at the same time. It was one thing for her to break herself into Winterfell, but it was another to try to break out with an old hag in tow. They’d never even make it out of the tower. It would be interesting to watch her try though. In the dark of the tower, it was hard to get a sense of her features. He had seen the nutty blond color of her hair. Her feet were bare and her black dress was simple. She was tall, but her voice still sounded young. 

“Stupid girl...go...run away…”

She shook her head and he heard her sniffle, “I’m not leaving without you.”

“...you must...they will hurt you...like they hurt me…” he smiled as he watched the old hag lift her hands to show the girl his handy work. The gasp he heard made him lick his lips. He remembered the delight he got in making Reek watch him slowly score and peel the flesh back from her fingers. It seemed to pain his pet greatly. It was likely this woman had helped raise Reek in some way during his time at Winterfell.

“What...what’ve they done…” she whimpered and he watched as she reached out and pulled the old woman close, “I’ll kill them,” the coolness in her voice sent a shiver down his spine. He liked that tone.

“...no...run...leave…”

“I can’t. I see you when I sleep, Nan. Mearow makes me drink things and I see you and Bran. It makes me scared. I don’t want to go back there alone. Please, let me help you.”

That was interesting. He wasn’t aware of drinks that made one see another person. The name she said interested him too. Bran was the name of one of the Stark boys. He was under the impression that Bran and Rickon had been killed. It was entirely possible that the girl was just insane, “...kill me...help me by killing me...end my suffering…”

The girl sat back and went tense, “I can’t-can’t do that.”

“I raised the Starks. I cared for Winterfell. I put my heart into this land. I want to die peacefully in it. Don’t let me suffer and rot. Please,” the old hag’s voice was stronger this time. She was ready to let go. It always upset him when they reached a place where death didn’t scare them anymore.

“...” the girl sniffled, but he watched her hand move and saw the flash of a small knife in the little bit of moonlight, “Alright. I’ll do it.”

Ramsay smiled and slowly pushed from the shadows as she, “Sweet girl, you would have married a Stark one day if things had been different. Master Brandon would have been lovesick enough to name you Lady of Winterfell, even if he couldn’t give you a child.”

“But he’s dead now too,” the girl was crying now, “Everyone is dying and I’ll be alone again. You sent me to a witch who doesn’t care for anyone. I don’t want to be alone, Nan…” a witch. That made him stop for a moment. He had heard there was a witch somewhere in the Wolfswood, but it had never been something to concern himself with. It might have been one day, but not right now. If it was true, then it was possible this girl was the witch’s pet. There was something enticing about that.

“You’ll only be alone if you let yourself disappear like Mearow has. You have to let me go, so you can find the right place to put your heart,” the sweetness of it was almost enough to make him gag. He was ready to put a stop to this, “Make it quick and run.”

The girl nodded, “...I will…”

This was it. He watched her raise the knife and before she could bring it down, he rushed out and grabbed her around the waist from one side and pinned her arm down on the other side. She didn’t scream like he expected for her to. Instead, she immediately started to fight. Ramsay could appreciate that. She threw her head back to smack into his face. He turned it just in time to not have his nose broken. Her legs kicked out wildly as she growled like a savage animal. Lifting her, her feet kicked harder as he fell back against the wall. The old hag was whimpering on the floor at the sight of him. She’d be of no use to the girl.

“And who are you?” he asked with a small laugh as she tried to turn the knife on him, but he locked his grip on her and rolled to press her up against the wall. He ground her hand into the stone, but she refused to drop her weapon. Instead, she continued to thrash against him and flail wildly. It had been some time since he had a girl this wild.

Misjudging his location, he rolled her again as she tried to kick back at his legs and she tipped out the window. Refusing to fall to his death, he released her when he felt her body going too far forward. He didn’t hear her scream still. Ramsay had heard that was the window Bran Stark had fallen from and lost his legs. He quickly looked out the window and saw her body sprawled out in a large pile of snow. For a moment, he was disappointed. He’d hoped to play with her more. 

Much to his surprise, she rolled off the snow and he saw a pile of hay they had yet to move under the slightly cleared spot where her body had landed. It was hard not to laugh just a little at her luck. She limped, but she started towards the trees where he assumed she had come from. He ran fast to the other window that faced the inside of Winterfell. He saw two of his men and shouted, “Get her! Now!”

They looked up in surprise at the sound of his voice, “Now!” he pointed towards the other side of the tower, “The girl! Go get her!” whether they understood or not, they knew better than not to listen. They ran for the gates and out them quick. He left the old hag there, determined to keep her alive. He would have to send someone up here to force feed her a bit to keep her going. She was obviously someone the girl cared about, so he had to actively keep her alive for the time being. If his men didn’t catch her, he’d get his hounds. He’d rather not kill her before he had a chance to play with her though. He made his way down from the tower and listened to the flurry of sounds going on. His shouts had woken the whole of Winterfell. 

He waited near the gates and was pleased when he heard his men coming back, “The cunt bit me!” the other man laughed and he heard the girl growl as they got closer. It took both the men to drag her. One had her by the hair, close to her scalp and the other had managed to wrap a rope around her arms to pin them down and was tugging it to make her walk. Only she wasn’t walking. She was making them half drag her through the snow and mud. 

They got close to him and one of them kicked the back of her knees to make her kneel in front of him. The knife was still tight in her hands. The hilt in one hand and the blade in the other. Blood dripped down her fingers. She wasn’t going to give up the small blade easily. The man holding her hair tugged it back and forced her to look up at him. Ramsay wasn’t displeased with her face. It was thin and sharp with large green eyes. She wasn’t a great beauty, but her skin was clear and she looked lovely enough. There was a bit of blood near the corner of her mouth and blood dripping down one of his men’s hands. She had bit him hard.

“And who do we have here breaking into my home?”

Her eyes narrowed, “Winterfell belongs to the Starks!” she snapped.

Ramsay tolerated a lot, but he didn’t let people take away the things he had claimed. He backhanded her and she sprawled out in the mud, “Winterfell belongs to the Boltons, you filthy bitch.”

“Her name is Lin or Linly or Lee or something like that,” he turned to see one of the former Stark servants who had sworn loyalty to his father speaking up, “She used to take care of Mas-...Brandon Stark after his fall. She was his maid. The Greyjoys were going to whip her to death, but she disappeared.”

“Disappeared, huh? You’re a tricky little thing, aren’t you?” he smiled, “From what the old hag said, Bran Stark would have made you his wife. So a little more than his maid, huh?” she was still lying in the mud. Moving to push herself up would have meant letting go of that knife and she wasn’t ready to do that, “Did you fuck him? No, probably not. The Greyjoys burned him when he was, what, eleven?”

“I’ll kill you,” she growled.

“Oh, I like the sound of that. You’re going to be fun to play with,” he crouched down a little and got closer to her, “You said you’ve been with a witch. That’s what you told the old bitch. If you were with a witch, that must mean you’re a witch or at least trying to. Isn’t that right?” she didn’t have to answer. The look of hatred on her face answered it for him, “Lucky you, I don’t stick it in witches. I’ve heard that’s how you get warts on your cock, but I’m sure there is plenty more we can have fun doing together.”

“Fuck you,” she spat, but it didn’t reach him. It was more just an act of insult, rather than an assault towards him.

“What should we do with her?”

He thought for a moment, “Put her in Reek’s kennel. He’s been good lately, he can sleep at the end of my bed until she learns to behave. Get that knife from her too, even if you have to cut her fingers off to get it. I want it.”

They nodded before dragging her up to her feet by her hair. He noticed his men put a little more distance between themselves and her. He didn’t blame them. They wouldn’t be comfortable having a witch around, but he was excited at the prospect.

A loud cawing got his attention and he looked up to see a large raven sitting perched on one of the walls. It was alone. He hadn’t seen ravens here other than the ones used to send messages. This one was larger than those. He had heard that there used to be ravens in Winterfell all the time that lived without being messengers, but none had seen them since the Grayjoys came in. It cawed once more before flying off.


	19. Mearow

When was the last time she had left the vicinity of her hut? Since before her back and knees began hurting, at least. It was far too much work to move that far. There was a time when she had lived on her feet. Those days were long gone. All she wanted was to sit in her chair with her fur and wait for death. To sit in the warm comfort that she had lived life the way she wanted and made no conditions for anyone else. She did what she wanted and when she wanted to do it. 

At least until that whelp turned up in her door. Mearow should have turned her away. Shouldn’t have let old history get the better of her in seeing that sweet plums box. Etched around the edge was a carving of a rose. The direwolf head on the top belonged to the Starks, but the rose belonged to her. 

She had met Nan, who went by Raven in those days, shortly after the death of the red haired girl who froze to death outside of Winterfell. Raven had been standing in the Wolfswood over a small burial mound. She was alone, holding a small carved bird and a winter rose in her hands. In those days, Mearow used to make trips to Winter Town to sell her Moon Tea to the brothel. They didn’t speak to each other. Mearow just went to stand next to her at the grave as the snow started to cover the freshly moved dirt.

Before she left, she finally asked the black haired girl what had happened. Raven told her the story of Rose and turning away the little girl who had somehow come upon a carved bird that her husband had made. Mearow had told her that it wasn’t the end of the world. She had made a mistake and learned a harsh lesson. That one day she would get a chance to save someone from a painful death and would make the right choice.

So when Linly turned up on her doorstep, Mearow knew that Raven had made that choice. Still, Mearow should have turned her away. Not because she couldn’t handle a young girl, but rather she hadn’t expected to actually like the foul mouthed little girl. The girl was special. She cussed up a storm, kicked things, and threw things; but above all that, she was smart. Smart and surprisingly talented.

It didn’t take long for Mearow to see that Linly had a natural talent for craft work. Her fingers were gentle and nimble despite her rough personality. She could pluck leaves and berries without bruising or damaging them. She could move a knife fast when she cut things and her cuts were generally very even and equal. The old raven liked her and quickly gave over the care of its egg for her. When she talked about her dreams, they were very vivid and bright. 

The girl had got upset one day over one of her salves not looking as nice as Mearow’s did. It worked the same, but it just didn’t look as nice. Mearow told her that their craft was a special type of art. That art didn’t have to be pretty, it just had to mean something. The salve she had made that day was to sooth the twist in Linly’s ankle she had gotten from kicking a tree outside when a squirrel took off with her walnuts. She wouldn’t admit that her salve didn’t usually look that nice. It only did because she had made it for Linly. She had made it for a purpose and that was why it looked nice to the girl. In truth, Mearow hadn’t noticed a difference between the two.

It didn’t take long for Mearow to realize what made Linly’s work better one day from the next. Most days, she was willing to talk about her dreams and such, but not on the days when her mixtures were exceptionally well done. Linly claimed to have only dreamed about the boy once, but Mearow knew better. She heard the girl say his name in her sleep many nights.

It had been wrong to give the girl Sun Tea. Mearow knew that. It wasn’t something that everyone could handle. Moon Tea took away from the world, but Sun Tea brought something into it. What it brought into the world depended on the person drinking it. For Linly, it made her dreams that much more vivid and she realized her mistake when the girl began to panic. In her eyes, her dreams were becoming real. She would scream at the sight of things that weren’t there and cry over things she could hear, but not see. She tried to correct it by slowly weaning the girl off the tea, but the damage was done.

When she said she was going back to Winterfell, Mearow let her go without a fight. She wanted to continue maintaining the idea that she didn’t care for the girl. But she did. Things went quiet after the girl left. At first, she thought she would enjoy going back to her quiet life. To let the calm sink back in and just settle down into her furs in front of the fire and continue waiting for death. 

But it didn’t feel right.

She kept looking at the sleeping mat on the floor and to the window where Linly liked to cut her herbs. The old raven had returned, but the young one was gone. It sat there staring at her day after day. There was no more cussing, no more panicking over things that weren’t there, and no more getting to see Linly manage to do something that had taken her decades to do. Mearow realized she missed it.

She had never wanted children of her own. It’s why she had worked so far to damage her body so much to avoid it ever happening even by mistake or accident. Hatching and raising her very independent raven was the closest she ever wanted to have a child. Yet she missed Linly. The girl had been hers to care for over a year now. It had been so long since she felt like she had actually done something new in life. It had helped to make what she thought would be the last year of her life feel more fulfilling. She missed that feeling now that it was gone.

It’s what had urged her to move her old, sore bones from her hut and towards Winterfell for the first time in a long time. The long walk was painful and there were many times she was tempted to turn back. The old raven hopped along with her, seeming to feel the same way. It took likely three times as long to get to Winterfell as it would have taken Linly. There was a chance that the girl wasn’t there anymore or even dead.

She made only one stop on her way that wasn’t just to rest her throbbing, sore, bare feet. It was to sit under an old tree just within sight of the northern castle. After all these years, there was nothing left to see, but she remembered as she laid a small winter rose down a few feet away in the snow and sat to rest. She remembered the burial mound that used to be here and had been flattened out over the years. The old raven hopped and climbed until it reached her shoulders. She paid it no mind as it used the height to hop onto a low tree branch and make its way up the limbs. It cawed loudly out into the night, it’s voice echoing in the small drifts of snow that were coming down. 

The strangled sound above her made her crane her head up in time to see the old bird fall from it’s branch. The dying caw was a saddening sound. It thumped into the snow at her cold, frost bitten toes and she reached down to pick it up. Buried through its body was an arrow. It’s black eyes weren’t shiny anymore and dark blood dripped from its body and onto the snow. She felt her heart sink. This bird had been her only companion until Linly turned up. They were linked together. The first time she managed to get one of her mixtures to work was when she had smeared a mix of winter rose petals, her own blood, and ferns over it’s egg and it hatched in her hands. Her magic came to life with the raven’s hatching. 

Mearow was going to die here at Winterfell. 

She had resigned to go peacefully and in her sleep back in her hut, but it seemed the gods had other plans for her death. It seemed fitting. She was the Witch of the Wolfswood and the North to those that remembered her. It made sense that she die in the heart of the north.

“Fuck. I don’t think that was the right one. Ramsay said it was bigger than that,” she looked over to see two men walking towards her, “Says that damn raven has been cawing at his window every night since we brought that witch in. Wish he would get rid of her. It’s wrong to keep a witch.”

“Myranda will kill her soon enough. She likes playing with her. She’s getting off on having a girl Ramsay won’t fuck.”

Mearow stood slowly after setting the body of her old friend down in the snow. It would be buried in the snow by morning, “Who the fuck are you?” they addressed her finally, “Hey, that’s the same dress the witch wears.”

“Hair is braided too and the raven…” they stopped and looked her over. She stood quietly, hands folded in front of her, “Dammit, fucking hell...you’re the witch of the woods.”

“Really? She’s ugly.”

“Yea, one of the whores talked about her when we brought the blonde one in.”

They looked at her for another moment, “Let’s get out of here. We should tell Ramsay.”

Mearow finally stepped forward, “I’ve come to Winterfell to see my daughter,” they both flinched a little and she watched them both grab for their weapons. Her eyes fixed on the one with the bow. The one who had killed her friend, “Take to her.”

“Fuck that,” he raised his bow and she wondered if she would really die right here. It wasn’t a terrible place to go. 

“Wait. We should bring her to Ramsay. If anyone is going to kill her, let him do it. I might be loyal to the Boltons, but he can get all the witch’s curses he wants. It’s bad luck to kill a witch,” Mearow knew all sorts of rumors went around about witches. It used to amuse her, but now she just simply found it dull. Apparently this one believed she could curse them if they killed her. Mearow was known for curses, but she knew they existed.

The man with the bow hesitated for a moment before lowering it, “Leave everything here,” she nodded and dropped her small bag to the ground, “That it?” she nodded, “Search her.”

“Fuck no. I’m not touching a witch. Keep your bow on her.”

They made her walk in front of them and kept a good distance back as they approached the gates, “Get Ramsay! It’s the old witch!”

The gates opened and she walked inside. It was much different from the last time she had been here. More dreary. Everyone walked with their heads hung and everything was somber. It was more fortress like than a home. She turned her eyes to the broken tower and felt her chest tighten. One of the men ran past her and she stood in the center of the yard, her bare feet sinking into the mud. People were looking at her, but she was just looking down at the dried raven’s blood on her hands.

“And what do we have here?” she looked up at the new man. He was cleaner than the others, but his soul was dirty. She felt sick just looking at him. He was the sort of man that had drove her to making the decision to kill her womb with an excess of Moon Tea.

“I want to see my daughter.”

He circled her like a wolf, but she stood her ground, “You don’t look like her mother.”

“I’m sure your father told your mother that many times when he bastard you. She should have come to see me, I could have prevented the problem.”

His eyes flared and he took a step towards her, his voice low, “You know, all these stories get told to us about witches when we’re children. About what baby eating, broom flying, deamon fucking monsters you are; but I’m starting to think that’s all just a bunch of shit. That little bitch hasn’t conjured up any monsters to kill me and save her. She hasn’t made hoards of birds fly down to peck out my eyes. No attempt to even seduce me with magic to free herself. She just stands there, quiet as a mouse, while I beat her. I cut off one of her toes the other day and she didn’t even cry out. She might be a stone hearted bitch, but she’s no monster under the bed and I doubt you are either.”

“You’re not wrong,” she admitted, “The world is full of strange thing, just waiting for our senses to grow sharp enough to see them. You’ll always be too dull to see them. We’re too sharp to be scared of the likes of you.”

Mearow wasn’t surprised when he lashed out. He grabbed her around the back of the neck and started dragging her faster than her old feet could walk. He half dragged her through the slush and mud into the halls of Winterfell. In all her years, she had never actually been inside the main part of the castle. Only as far as the yard. The way it looked now was now how she imagined it was meant to look. It smelled of blood and death. Slow rot and decay.

Her bare feet dragged and scraped along the stone floor as he pulled her through the halls and down a staircase. They passed several doors before he shoved her through one. Instead she was met with the sight of Linly tied naked to a post in the floor. She was covered in bruises, cuts, and bright red welts. Her right foot was missing a toe. The removal of it had been poorly done. If it wasn’t infected already, it soon would be. Her hair hadn’t been cut off, but it was matted and dirty. Her eyes looked lifeless.

Crouched in front of her was another girl. A healthy looking woman with dark hair and the same look in her eyes that Ramsay had. Her mouth twisted into a sick grin as she looked back at the two of them in the door. In her hands was a metal brander with the flayed man sigil of the Bolton house. The brand was red hot, “My Lord,” she said with a sickening amount of affection, “I was going to brand her in your name.”

Mearow didn’t move to stop any of it from happening. That wasn’t what she was here for. Things would always happen as they were meant to, “Of course you were. The young witch of the woods branded to House Bolton. I’m sure father will find that amusing or disgusting and I’ll just have to cut that patch of skin off her. Go on.”

He held her fast by the neck, but she didn’t so much as flinch as she watched the other girl press the hot brand into Linly’s shoulder. Ramsay had mentioned she didn’t react to the things they did to her and she didn’t react to this. Her body twitched a little, but she barely blinked and her face didn’t even tense. Mearow understood what was happening, but these dull people couldn’t and it wasn’t her job to explain it. Linly’s mind was gone. Shut down. The residual Sun Tea had taken her somewhere else or maybe no where. Maybe she was still here and simply seeing something more horrific than what they were doing to her. There were any number of things, but none of them were understandable to these dull people.

“She’s no fun. I can’t make her do anything,” she pulled the brand away, a bit of skin sticking to it as she dropped it to the floor with a huff. The mark on her shoulder was beat red, “I’m bored with her.”

“I think I have the cure for that,” he smiled and dragged her closer, “Little Witch, we have your mother here,” the dark haired girl stood up and looked Mearow over curiously, “I’d kill the old hag, but I still need her for what she knows of the Starks. But your old witch mother is completely useless to me. I might consider sparing her though. Shoving her in the tower with the other old bitch...if you start behaving.”

Linly didn’t respond still. Her eyes stared off blankly, “It won’t work. She doesn’t care for me and I don’t fear death, imprisonment, or torture. I am to die this winter anyway,” and here in Winterfell, “She knows that well enough.”

“But she did cry for the old hag…” he smiled as he pulled out a knife. Mearow recognized it. It was Linly’s knife. She used it to cut all her herbs and to skin animals for meals, “Whom I’ve heard was rather strict cunt. But she cried for her. I bet she’ll cry for you too.”

There was no point in bracing for what she had known was coming. He was a simple minded man. He might have thought he was clever because of the way he played with people, but he wasn’t special. He was a dull man that used an excess of violence to make his life mean something to someone, “You’re going to die one day. You’re going to lose everything,” she turned her eyes on the dark haired girl, “She’ll die first and by your own doing. Then you, again, by your own doing. The things you craft will turn on you and you’ll suffer.”

“Prattling cunt,” he growled before jamming the knife into her gut and dragging it up a bit.

Like Linly, she twitched a little, but she didn’t cry out. Acceptance of death no matter the way it came made it a painless process for her. She sank to her knees, blood pouring out in front of her, but she didn’t feel it. It just made her feel lighter. Like the weight of decades was being lifted off her. Her dark eyes drifted up to the girl. Her glassy, green eyes were looking at her, but there was still no life in them. Tears leaked out of her eyes, but there was no real reaction. It made Mearow smile.

The dark haired girl grabbed Linly’s chin and looked at her, “She’s crying, but...it’s not the same. Boring.”

Ramsay sighed and finally released her throat, letting her fall to the floor, “Let her sit here with the body for a few days and no food. We’ll see how she’s feeling then.”

The dark haired girl moved past her as her vision started to blur and she heard the door shut behind her. It closed off all light from the room. She could smell blood and burnt flesh, “There’s a bit of magic in everything…” the girl’s voice sounded hollow.

“...and some loss to even things out,” she finished the sentence for Linly.

The girl’s head slumped against the post she was tied to and Mearow closed her eyes for the last time.


	20. Linly

It was hard to tell how much time had passed since she was locked up in this room. She spent much of her time now watching the slow decay of Mearow’s body. Watching the flies start to infest it and smelling the stink as it filled the room. It made her throw up a few times, but after expelling nothing but stomach fluids her body gave up doing that.

Ramsay came back eventually to check on her. He seemed pleased that she was responding more naturally now. It wasn’t because everything suddenly hit her, but rather because the tea Mearow used to give her had finally worked its way out of her body. The scary and painful visions it gave her finally stopped. It had been wrong to come back to Winterfell just because she had seen Bran in a hallucination. Because of her, Mearow was dead and she would likely die soon too. Once Ramsay seemed pleased with the fact that he could make her cry now, he dragged her free of the room on a daily basis. She still returned there when his sessions with her was finished. He didn’t remove the body though. It was left to torment her. 

Worse than Ramsay was his dark haired companion. She called herself Myranda. She told Linly that she hated when he kept other girls to fuck, but she hated it more when he gave special treatment to a girl. Linly was, apparently, getting some kind of special treatment by not being raped. The woman burned her with hot irons and paraded her around the Winterfell yard naked for everyone to see. She seemed to delight in showing everyone that Linly being a witch was nothing special at all. That she had no magical powers to call down any kind of wrath on them.

Myranda wasn’t wrong. Linly didn’t know how to save herself from this. She’d run away from Winter Town and she’d run away from Winterfell before. Running wasn’t an option this time. She’d met another girl that Ramsay kept who had tried to run away. The hounds had come back with parts of her in their maws. She’d never felt this helpless before. Even as scared as she was when she had been hallucinating, she’d never felt like this. Myranda was right to call her out for being useless.

Maybe if she had her herbs or her tools from Mearow’s hut, she could make a poison or make something to distract them. Yet she didn’t have those things. Mearow had never taught her magic like the stories said. She didn’t even know if magic like that really existed. Mearow said it did, but she’d never seen any of it. Linly refused to believe it was all lies. She wanted to believe magic was real and that she would use it to get free of all of this. Sadly, believing in it and it being true were different things.

She continued to hallucinate seeing Bran, which didn’t help matters. He kept telling her to just hold on. That he would be back in Winterfell and he would take care of her. Again, she wanted it to be true. He would hold her while she cried and cover her head so she didn’t have to see Mearow’s body. It hurt so much when she would open her eyes and realize she was just laying on the floor crying and he was never actually there. It seemed that her mind hated her as much as her tormentors. It wanted her to suffer. So much so that she started to wonder why.

All she had wanted was to escape a life of being a whore. She had made a mistake in thinking she was better than her whore of a mother. Perhaps if she had stayed, she might at least have a bed to lay in and not watching a body slowly rot while laying naked in the dirt. It was wrong of her to think she could be better. For befriending above her station. Just for thinking that she could fall in love. Then for thinking she could be something special like a witch. For all of that, she was being made to suffer.

The loud sound of metal on metal rang in her ears. It was loud enough that she had to cover them because it hurt, “Time to wake up, Little Bitch!” it was Myranda again. Was it already time for her daily torment again? Linly felt like it had just ended merely an hour ago. She wasn’t sure how much longer her body could handle this. Everything ached. Myranda force fed her just enough to keep her alive, but she usually threw most of it up. Eventually she wouldn’t be able to stand on her own and Myranda would take to either dragging her around or just killing her. Linly got the feeling that it was up to Ramsay when exactly she got to die though.

The dark haired woman banged the pots she was holding together again a few times before throwing them down, “Come on, Little Bitch, Ramsay wants you today.”

She groaned softly as the other woman grabbed her dirty, matted braid and made her get onto her knees, “That’s it, Little Bitch, crawl on all four like a dog. That’s where you’re going today. To see the puppies,” she cackled.

Linly had spent her first two nights locked up in the kennels. It was funny that her last night at Winterfell had been in the kennels and that’s where her first night back had been too. The dogs there now weren’t the same as the ones the Starks had raised though. They were vicious creatures. Monsters bred by a monster. Ramsay had given them a taste for human flesh and they had barked, gnawed, and clawed at the bars to the cage she had been put in those first two nights trying to get to her. She was prey to them.

Myranda half dragged her through the halls of Winterfell. Men snickered at her, threw things at her, and made lewd gestures as they passed. Myranda seemed to like being in control of it all. She seemed to get off on it. She and Ramsay had had sex in front of her more than once. It was a gruesome thing to watch. There was screaming and slapping and choking. Linly wasn’t experienced in the matters of sex or love making, but she knew it shouldn’t be like that. She liked viewing Linly as her little pet that Ramsay had given her and she enjoyed the way people treated her when she walked through Winterfell with the witch on her heels.

They stopped for a moment in front of the smithery and she collapsed into the cold mud. Shivering, she would rather be laying here than continue to crawl. They were nearly to the kennels, but she wanted to die here, “Eric, is there something you like about the Little Bitch? You always come out to see her.”

Linly raised her head up to see the blacksmith. It was the old man she had stabbed when she was younger. He had trapped her one night and she had done what Old Nan told her to. Jab him and he would run off to tend to his wounds. He’d done just that and let her be since then. It didn’t surprise her that he was still here. Men who liked little girls wouldn’t have an issue abandoning their loyalties to the old masters of Winterfell for the new ones.

“I was here when she served the Starks. Just like seeing her crawling like the animal she is. Damn near savage as a Wildling when she was younger. Good on you to put her in her place. Good on Master Ramsay.”

His words didn’t surprise her, but she groaned in pain as Linly pulled her back up to her knees by her braid. She didn’t even notice the man coming up beside her, but she yelped in pain as he cracked a hand down hard on her bare hip. Her body shook and she fell on her side into the mud again. While she screamed at the tortures and cried in pain, Linly hadn’t spoken a word since Mearow’s death. White hot anger ran up her throat now though, “Better a Wildling than a child fucker.”

Myranda cackled and even let go of her hair for a moment so she could laugh. The blacksmith didn’t seem to find it as funny. He threw his booted foot into her side again. Linly covered her face with her thin hands to protect it as she curled up a bit when he continued to kick, “Stupid cunt!” he spat at her as he kicked. It appeared that his leg finally healed from the stab she had given it years ago when he tried to have his way with her. Myranda’s cackles and his words were drowned out by the sound of the blood rushing through her ears. 

Why wouldn’t they let her die? She had given them what they wanted. She cried for them the way they wanted. She screeched in pain when they burned her and hit her. Yet they didn’t seem to tire of her yet. What more could they do to her? Ramsay wouldn’t rape her. He wasn’t scared of her being a witch, but he had said more than once that men who fucked witches got the itch and warts on their cocks. Despite everything, at least he wasn’t willing to damage his own cock. If he wasn’t going to rape her to death, why not throw her into the woods to be hunted like one of his other play things? Perhaps it was because she was more Myranda’s play thing than she was Ramsay’s. She had likely never had one before.

“That’s enough, Eric. Ramsay wants her today,” the kicking stopped and she looked up weakly to see him backing away and licking his lips.

Myranda grabbed up a fist full of her matted braid once again and forced her to her knees. Linly was actually thankful the other woman never expected her to walk, because she wouldn’t be able to at the moment. The ache ran deep in her body, “I need to speak with Master Ramsay. I’ll come with.”

They restarted their little procession. Myranda making her crawl through the mud of Winterfell, people throwing things at her, looking at her, making their comments. It had been humiliating the first time it happened, but she had learned how to let her mind wander. She thought mostly on Mearow. On the things she had been taught. All in the hopes of finding something that could help her get free or end her life. The woman had barely spoke to her the whole time she had lived in that little hut. Linly could recall nothing of use that she could easily manage in her current situation. She had no potions, herbs, or even a knife. How could she do any kind of magic without the proper items to do it with?

The sounds of dogs barking broke through her thoughts and she collapsed on the stones just inside of the kennel as Myranda released her hair. The hounds barked day and night. Ramsay liked his hounds more than he did most people. Myranda told her that he cared so much about his hounds that he wouldn’t even let them fuck a witch for fear of what it would do to them. She had seen the way he fucked Myranda, so she could only imagine what he would allow his dogs to do to a woman lesser than her.

“You needed something of me, Blacksmith?” his voice always put a shiver down her spine. 

Ramsay Snow was a hideous man in her eyes. She remembered the handsome features of the eldest Stark son and the bastard son of Lord Stark. She remembered the soft, but still handsome look of her hallucinations of Bran. Ramsay wasn’t handsome. He was wide all over, fleshy with blotchy skin and a broad nose. The short messy hair on his head looked greasy. His mouth looked small, until he actually smiled. It was always a wet lipped smile and it took up most of his face in an unnerving way. Even if she wasn’t his captive, she wouldn’t have found him handsome.

“I want the witch.”

She craned her head to see them, pain wracked through her body, but she didn’t care, “Want her for what?” Ramsay laughed.

“I wanted her when she was here before and I want her now. She stabbed me once. I want to make her pay for that. Good on you for what you do to her, Master Ramsay, but she deserves more and I deserve justice for what she did to my leg.”

“And what do you want to do with her that myself and Myranda won’t?” he seemed exceedingly proud of the things he did.

“I want to fuck her. Harder than any daemon she fucked in those woods did. Stupid whore whelp was always running off with Brandon Stark like she was deserving of the attention of a highborn. You’ve done a fine job putting her in her place, but I want to finish it.”

Ramsay smiled that wide, twisted smile of his as he walked over and knelt down next to her, “What do you think, Little Bitch, you want to be fucked to death? Eric here is willing to risk warts on his cock to do it.”

She would have laughed if her body had the ability to do it. It didn’t though. She just lay there on the stones, shivering as the cold air seeped into her skin, and the mud hardened on her body, “So long as it ends with death.”

He laughed and reached over to pat her cheek hard. It wasn’t quite a slap, but it still hurt a little, “What a brave little bitch you are. You’ve accepted death, which means killing you is no longer fun. You should have begged me not to let him do it, then I might have. But you’re not very bright, are you?” he smiled and stood up, “You can have her, but you can’t kill her. Leave her as raw as you want, but don’t kill her.”

“I can work with that, Master Ramsay. Thank you…”

“Ah, ah, ah, I wasn’t finished. You can have her, but don’t kill her, provided I like what you give me in return for her. Myranda is quite fond of her. If you’re going to have her for some time, I need something to give to her in return,” the kennelmaster’s daughter was his favorite. She wasn’t a toy for him. She was something special to him and that terrified her sometimes. It was one thing to deal with sadistic, cunt hungry men; but a woman felt unnatural to see in such a way. Then again, the only women she had much interaction with were whores, old story tellers, Wildlings, and aged witches. Not exactly everyday women.

“Master Ramsay I could…” at least she knew her body was worth something to someone, “...I can temper a dagger for Miss. Myranda in her blood.”

“Oh? You can? How exactly does one do that?”

“Simple enough. When it’s still white hot, you sink it into the body. I’ve seen it done once before. Doesn’t change the appearance of the blade or the strength of it. A sword would kill her, but a dagger...she might lose the use of a leg. Specifically the left,” the one she had stabbed him in, “Into her thigh. The thickest part,” where she had jabbed her small knife, “Give her to me for two days. I’ll give her back alive and with a dagger tempered in her body and blood.”

Ramsay licked his lips and smiled, “What do you think, Myranda?”

“That sounds...wonderful.”

“There it is then,” he smiled again before looking down at her, “You’re a lucky little bitch. Did you know that? I have a lame dog and I was going to toss you in there to play with it. Guess you get to play with a real cock instead.”

Anger pooled in her stomach. Mearow had told her the story of the men who had touched her and violated her. Of how she purged herself of the ability to have a child and never laid with a man again. Men like these had done it to her and they were ultimately her death. If she had never come to Winterfell, Mearow would have died quietly in her sleep one evening in the cold. 

“No cock will ever be inside me.”

“We’ll see about that. If Eric makes it through with no itch or warts, I think the rest of my men are going to have a very fun night two days from now.”

Linly’s dried lips cracked a little as she forced herself to smile, “I saw you in a dream once before you killed my mother witch. Your dogs were shitting you out.”

“My hounds love me. I’m going to name one after you. That’s quite an honor, I hope you know,” her raven cawed from somewhere in Winterfell. Ramsay hated her bird, but his men had yet to be able to find it or shoot it down. He had beat her once for over an hour because she claimed not to know where it was hiding in the castle. It didn’t matter that she truly didn’t know. A swift kick to her jaw made her curl up in pain again, “Remember, Eric, I want her back alive. Else it will be you fucking my hounds.”

“I understand, Master Ramsay.”


End file.
